


Salvageable

by Conversity



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Ace finally gets to be Imperator, After the Movie, Bathing/Washing, Family, Friendship/Love, Headcanon, Hurt/Comfort, Just Tuck and Roll and You'll be Fine!, Max Comes Back, Multi, Not All the War Boys Died on Fury Road!, Puppy Piles, Rebuilding, Redemption, Slight Allusion to Cannon Typical Non Consensual Touching, War Boy Culture, War Boys of Color
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-04-19 18:31:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4756688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Conversity/pseuds/Conversity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When War Boys fall from their rides, alive and left behind, they must make the Walk of Shame back to the Citadel. The Ace finds himself wounded and betrayed, wondering what awaits him as he heads back home. He doesn't know that the Immortan is dead, the War Boys almost all sacrificed, and that somewhere in the catacombs Furiosa still mourns him and their lost crew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Walk of Shame

Against the pale backdrop of morning, the Citadel towers are just a bit taller than Ace’s thumb as he closes one eye and tries to discern the distance. Maybe half a day’s march if he doesn’t get picked off by the buzzards or drops dead from heat exhaustion. But the Walk of Shame, as many of the War Boys had taken to calling it, wasn’t a new concept by any means. If you survived the fall from one of the vehicles, you either prayed to V8 that one of your brothers hoisted your rusty frame up onto their ride as they raced by or you trekked home.  


Some thought that the walk was its own rite of passage, having survived the Salt and coming back shinier from the sand blasts and blistering sun. The Lift Operators would recognize the boys with their worn, white paint and embarrassed, broken egos and let them back up into the towers to sulk and tinker. Depending on when and where they took the fall, some didn’t return for days, a week at most. Then they would stumble in like specters, their crew, who had already said their goodbyes and made their peace, scared awake when the gritty, shivering boy wound his way into their sleeping spaces. As a rule, after a week had passed since a boy fell, their things were divvied up accordingly, their position filled, the promotions moving War Boys up through the ranks in odd, understandably somber ways.  


Morsov, may he rest peacefully in Valhalla, had a tendency to hop around the convoy vehicles and found himself slipping into the sand almost habitually. The first time, Sprocket had been able to swerve beside him so a polecat could heft him out of the way of the War Rig but, more commonly, he tuck and rolled and wondered if this would be how he was witnessed until he lifted his head from a dune and watched the convoy grow smaller and smaller, out of reach. Ace taught the pups not to expect any kind of handouts on the Fury Road, remembers when one of the older ones rose his hand and asked, ‘What if you get left?’  


“Then you gotta make the Walk of Shame.”  


 Ace hadn’t ever had to make the trek back on foot and without the War Rig’s hiss and grind, the gentle sway of her bulk underfoot and with his paint faded and flecking, he felt almost naked. His pants were ripped at the knee where he had caught the side of the rig in his fall and his lip was crusted with blood from that organic swing Furiosa had taken in defense.  


 The Citadel crept closer, the sand packed and sturdy as he found the main road they took for runs to Gas Town, and never had he felt more terrified to enter. Furiosa had done something terrible, the evidence of her guilt clear in her short, vague answers, the red rims of her eyes, even the way she hadn’t slept soundly the night before. But he couldn’t comprehend what she had planned. He picks his brain as if he’s scouring for a loose screw, trying to figure out how she had gotten this past him.  


There’s a flick of memory, of the day before their run. They were down in the garage where the engine work is easier with the sun bleeding through a carved window. Furiosa was more fond of doing her own tune ups but she needed extra hands to fit into the intricate spaces where belts wound, so Sprocket, Flare, and Miles were all crowded around the cool, looping steel. She heard Ace enter and wiped her organic hand on her pants before she went to him, standing at his side to watch the boys work.  


She didn’t speak, instead, let him fill the space with a sigh as the alcove grew loud when a War Pup tested the gas pedal so the Boys could find out where the squeaking was coming from.  


“Crew’s ready with the new braking system,” Ace reported, “Just need to get belts of bullets for the guns on the rig and change out the tires for the bikes and we’ll be set.”  


Sprocket cussed as he dropped a wrench into the middle of the mechanical quagmire and the pup stopped revving the engine as Flare tried to fish it back out. Furiosa didn’t meet his eyes as she said, “Was thinking of letting the second string crew have a go at this one.”  


“Boss, the boys have behaved themselves and built this second motor almost from the scraps up. I say they deserve this run; bit a fresh air will do ‘em good.” Ace had raised enough pups to see the signs of stir-crazy setting in. It’d been over thirty days since a proper run, most of their extra energy being burned off scrapping in the pits, arm wrestling in the mess hall, and in Morsov’s case, testing how long he could keep picking at Slit before the lead lancer finally tore out his throat with his teeth. And Ace couldn’t deny it; he was looking forward to stretching out in the sun. He wasn’t sure how much longer he had before his half-life was up and, while he wasn’t chasing it on Fury Road, Ace worried each run would be his last.  


 Furiosa had shrugged, her eyes intent on the pit crew as they started sniping back and forth. But her voice was stoic as she continued, “It’s just a milk run, won’t miss anything. But it could be a good endurance test for the newer crew.” Ace ducked his head and made her look at him. She searched his face for a bit but didn’t change her mind.  


“Ok,” he agreed after noticing her jaw clench when she turned away, “I’ll go tell the boys.”  


Breaking the news wasn’t hard and they took it like he knew they would, kicking and screaming. But Imperator orders were law and if she wanted them here, then they’d stay. They bitched through lunch, grumbled through refitting the engines, and by dinner were resigned enough to form half plans on what to do with their schedules open. That night they still tip toed into her room while she sketched out a new design for her arm and settled in the mound of threadbare blankets and thin pillows they had scavenged over their time as a crew. They had slept like they always did before a job, like the pups that were tangled together in the lower levels, close and warm and heavy on each other. Furiosa had brushed her hand, the warm, skin and bone one, across their foreheads where their black war paint had been washed off. She wasn’t usually so deliberate but Ace thought maybe she was apologizing for not letting them go with her.  


 Ace remembers how she had woken that next day, leaving without a word, and something in him wouldn’t have it. He woke Morsov and Sprocket, who were spooned together and drooling in the warm spot their Imperator had left, and together they all dressed and painted, walking through the crowded, bustling corridors like they were supposed to be here.  


When Furiosa watched Sprocket’s car be roll out, Morsov climbing on back with his pail of tools and lancer sticks under his arms, she had grit her teeth and barked for them to stand down, they had been given orders to stay. Ace had stepped up, his arms crossed, all her blind fury stopping as she got nose to nose with him.  


 “I don’t trust them out there with you for a week. I’d feel better if you at least had us here, ok?” As the War Boys scattered around fussing over the last few details before the Immortan came to bless them, Ace knew she didn’t have the time to argue his decision.  


 Now, as he finally reaches the outskirts of the Wretched encampments, he wishes she had.


	2. The Bodies Left Empty Tombs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Furiosa tries to explain to Capable about the War Boys' culture while trying to reconcile her role in its collapse.

The halls were oddly quiet as Furiosa climbed the hewn steps up through the mountain. The garages echoed her booted steps as she passed, the spaces vacant without the Revheads and Blackthumbs crowding around in throbbing, electrified masses. A few rooms, where unfinished projects sat, neglected, looked as if the War Boys had simply stepped out for meal time. She turned into one of the alcoves, ducking beneath the low, white dusted frame and stepped into a workshop she was familiar with. 

Sam's '79 Firebird was still mounted on cement blocks, taped and waiting for its final coats of paint, abandoned in the rush to go to war. There's a sadness that Furiosa doesn't want to acknowledge, gritting her teeth against the burn of tears in the back of her throat. Sam was recently promoted to driver but if the Firebird was here that meant he rode out as Lancer for Trix, a fellow War Girl a few years younger than Furiosa. Both were gone and the Firebird, christened 'Ajax', would never see the Fury Road.  


"Furiosa?"  


The memories crowded until they were a million snapshots coalescing into a fine needlepoint, the focus blurred as someone called her name. But it wasn't Morsov, no, she had heard them witness him, couldn't be any of her crew who had been left out to bleach in the sand.  


"Furiosa?"  


A perplexed voice in her asked why they weren't calling her boss.  


"Are you ok-?"  


There was a hand on her shoulder and Furiosa drew out of reach as the garage came back into focus and instead of white war paint and greased black foreheads, she saw Capable standing there, unshaken and alone, a dimple in her cheek as she tried to smile.  


"You really should be resting. But the Dag said you'd be here." Capable brushed her thick curls behind her shoulder and kept looking over Furiosa like she was memorizing her, the flickering gaze so unlike the War Boys, whose eyes drew long unblinking lines when they assessed something. Her steps were careful as she approached the Firebird, almost like it may roar to life, a phoenix from the ashes. "You know, Angharad never liked any of this, the cars and the weapons. But…" Capable drew her hand from beneath her shawl and brushed thin fingers over the necklace of bottle caps strung around the rearview mirror. "I didn't see how such beautiful things could be bad."  


Furiosa found enough breath to say, "It's a difference in points of view. Down here…"  


"Everything hurts," Capable finished, remembering the hurtful truth Furiosa had given Angharad.  


"Yes. But you don't understand. The cars…" She gestures with her mechanical hand to the parts hanging from the wall, belt strips, shards of mirrors, and other scavenged trinkets that the boys had planned to mount as ornaments. "It's all they knew. And they were good at it." Furiosa remembers the Pups preening beneath the hands of War Boys when they retrieved the right tools, finally useful after a life of being pushed through the hordes of Wretched. She recalls how proud Sprocket had been after he spent three days rewiring the lights on his first bike, the way Nux had bragged that his new Lancer was the best in the Citadel, the heated conversations some of the younger ones would have over how best to finish a project, the hushed whispers of the older ones under the moonlight as they promised each other their things in case they were witnessed.  


Here, in the bowels of rock, the memories flood the cracks of her and Furiosa has to lean her mechanic hand on the primed hood. The things she's witnessed here, the brotherhood and camaraderie, the struggle amongst the ranks, the tooth and nail fighting it took to become Imperator, they carved her into being. The challenges had made her strong, the brotherhood tighter knit around her after initiation. The grease smeared across her brow was earned, her war paint scrubbed ceremoniously until she was raw, flesh, real and living unlike the skeleton War Boys. She had been risen. Imperator. Commander. Untouchable.  


At first, Furiosa thought all of the boys were stupid. Their world view was tiny and hopeless, though endearing as they grew and filtered their emotions the best way they could. Most were rough with each other; afraid to be called soft, but sometimes they were gentle and surprisingly kind. But that didn't dull the edge of their sharpness, the blood thirst that made some almost rabid in their attempts to grasp at their dreams of Lancer, Driver, Witnessed. But in their infinite wisdom and creativity with machinery and ways to reach Valhalla, the boys still knew nothing of trees or why they were half-life, why they were dying in the middle of the night with scalding fevers and stomach pains.  


Her initiate mother had kept books from the Before Time and let her read how things used to be before the bombs fell and though most of the knowledge was useless, Furiosa prided herself in memorizing it and knowing how to read. But as she watched the War Boys take apart their transmissions, crawl up into the undercarriage to find leaks, weld the thin scabs of their projects shut, the seed of understanding was planted. The soil might have been sour and shallow but the vine grew regardless.  


"These were things they could understand. Half-life means pain and sickness. Death either snuck up on them in the middle of the night or they met it head first out there on the Fury Road. From the time they're brought here as pups all they know is V8 and the war they must wage to reach Valhalla. You don't understand. For a half-life, this is the closest chance to something more."  


Capable remembers the unperturbed way Nux had confessed about his tumors, Larry and Barry. He had understood that they would probably be the reason he goes if he wasn't witnessed on the Fury Road, even wondered aloud if he wasn't spared for something greater. She looked back at the car and day dreams what his had looked like, what the soft War Boy had found and bartered for to complete his chariot.  


"Did you know Nux?"  


"No. All the boys I worked with had died by the time I was promoted to the War Rig. My crew was all I knew. Most of us grew up in the same litter of pups and we ended up working well enough to stick together." Furiosa doesn't mention that she used her title as Imperator to surround herself with people she trusted. Morsov was an eunuch, Sprocket was there to pull her out of a brawl the first day she had been in the pits, and Ace…  


"Oh. I was just thinking that Nux seemed different. He wasn't aggressive or hostile and he didn't-" Her unfinished words hung densely in the silence between them and Furiosa understood. He hadn't tried to grab any of them, had never looked at them with that flare of lust and possession.  


"He tried to strangle me, though it was warranted. He saw me as a traitor to the pack," Furiosa says in a small voice. "And he had orders not to harm any of you."  


"But after he joined us, after the Immortan saw his failure, he was different." There was a beat before, "Did the boys ever treat you different? For being a woman?"  


There's voices stirring in the halls as pups run past, bare feet echoing as they all try to race down to the lift. Pups are notorious for gossip and because they were fast and small, were often used as messengers. If there was news, Pups usually knew it.  


"Shock!" Furiosa called blindly, and sure enough, a tiny bald head peeked around the corner. "What's going on?"  


"The Lift Masters are letting up boys who made the Walk. No cars though, just boys."  


Furiosa wished she had a small, candied treat to give him for his honesty; Shock had always been her go-to for information milling about the Citadel. But then the pups began to chant and cheer as the lift started and Shock looked to Furiosa, silently asking permission to go. "Cog said The Ace is one of them." He stated as if to explain why they all needed to hurry as quick as possible.  


"The Walk?" Capable asked when she turned to Furiosa, but the woman was cinching her belt tighter, moving out of the garage to follow the sea of little ones. "Where are you going?"  


She never got an answer as Furiosa waded through the sea of children to reach the loading bay, her hand covering her eyes as she watched the boys be raised up.


	3. Homecoming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The War Boys finally come home and find its not quiet the same. Furiosa begins to see that she's upset the balance of how things used to be and isn't sure how to move forward as she confronts Ace.

War Boys, much like wolves for a hunt, go out in packs and return to the den as packs. Knowing this, Ace shouldn’t feel so surprised when he sees other War Boys gathering slowly near the lift, as if drawn to a beacon. He recognizes many of them, though with their wounds and shambling steps they look worse for the wear. Most are clinging to each other, holding themselves up by grabbing onto their brothers’ shoulders, hands trembling and eyes weary. Their war paint is gritty and splotched; uncovering the mottling bruises, some fresh, some days old, yellowed and black.  


As he nears, he hears their voices muttering against the din of the Wretched, who have circled around them, watches as they all reunite with embraces and small questions, careful not to jostle the ones who look almost torn apart. Coma, without his red jump suit and double necked axe, was being led by a masked polecat and a driver who still had his steering wheel clutched tightly in his fist. Hatch and Splinter caught sight of each other and ran to grasp hands, knocking their foreheads together as they whispered what Ace knew were hard, disrespectful slurs to cover up how frightened they were.  


The voices of the Wretched grew louder as they began to shout at the boys, no longer frightened of their tattoos and war paint without the fire and steel wrapped around them.  


“Shouldn’t ‘ave come back.”  


“She’ll skin ya.”  


“How dare ya’ll stand there to be lifted up! Ain’t gonna get in, not while she’s there.”  


“You’ll rot here, rot here, learn to take root boys; no way you can make it back.”  


Their hisses were quieted as the lift shuttered awake with a slow, groaning sound, the War Boys looking up expectantly. Never had they been denied entrance, never made to wait when returning.  


Above them, shadowed in the mouth of the Citadel’s entrance, was a woman Ace wasn’t surprised to see. If Furiosa set out to go against Joe then of course she had won. He’d never known her to do anything half assed. Even without her greased forehead and darkened eyes, she looks deadly and unmovable, something in her stance more terrifying than the Immortan had ever been. Joe had to don his breathing apparatus and medal coverings before facing his subjects but Furiosa stood, bare and bold, surrounded with tiny, paint-naked, pups all trying to catch a glimpse of their older brothers below. She was mother and warrior, reclamation and victory, and as the War Boys looked to her, she was God.  


Ace limped through the throng of boys and felt their confusion and anxiety, unable to tell if she really was going to denounce them, leaving them to starve like the Wretched suggested. Furiosa was capable of anger, in ways that Ace was secretly proud of, but he never knew her to be cruel.  


“Imperator!” Hatch called up to her, a small smile stretching his face as he held his ribs. “Furiosa, please!”  


She gestured with her mechanical hand and the War Pups standing around the lever all pulled together, bringing the lift to life as it lowered slowly. In response, the War Boys all bowed their heads and raised their tired arms up, fingers crossed in the V8 salute.  
\--------------------------------------------------------------  


As the lift stalled at the top, War Pups and Boys alike all mingled as if they were coming back from a raid well done, basking in the warmth of their presence after a long week of empty nests and cold nights. The War Boys almost didn’t recognize the little ones without their white clay, skin undecorated and dark with the colors of their origins. Only during baths or when Imperators were promotionally cleansed did the white clay become a thing in the past, a rite of passage already bared.  


The War Boys didn’t dare look at Furiosa though, as if meeting her watchful gaze would combust them on the spot, until a polecat and Coma approached her, the Doof Warrior’s hands reaching blindly for her shoulder. When he felt the cloth of her shirt, he moved his hand to her throat and then through her short shaved hair to grasp at the back of her neck. They tilted to bump foreheads and he smiled when she returned the gesture. After that they milled about to see her, unsure and weary as she held her ground and watched their faces as if to discern whether they’d rise against her.  


“What’s all the fuss about?” The Dag’s voice sounded from her perch on a balcony over the hallway, shock white hair loose around her shoulders as she braided beads into the thin stands framing her face. “They come up out of the sand like lizards and expect refuge? Figures. All men do is want.”  


Capable looked on as Furiosa greeted her brothers, unafraid in the turbulent waves of men, many of which were taller than she was, thickly muscled and still armed in some cases.  


“Furiosa,” one of them, clothed in black trousers and black riding jacket, asked slowly, “what’s happened, the war parties-”  


But she cut him off with a curt nod as if to say, not here, and waved them into the catacombs. As they all moved together, with War Pups pulling some along with tugs on their hands or pants, Ace almost felt as if nothing was different than the old times. Except for the women staring at them in confusion, traces of fear and revulsion staining their faces.  


“Are they going to stay here? All of them?” The youngest of the Wives asked and a few War Boys who overheard scoffed.  


“We live here, where the hell else we supposed to go?”  


At the front of the mob, Furiosa directed them to the Organic Mechanic’s old passage and Ace found that the place had been spruced up. Small cots lined the jutting stone beds, the cages where the Blood Bags had hung rusted and vacant.  


“If you have broken bones, park it here,” Furiosa commanded and the boys pushed at each other to finally rest, playfully shoving as they sat and eased their fatigued bodies. Their adrenaline rushes seemed to have tapered as more began to groan and cuss, their wounds throbbed intently. Organic Pups dipped strips of rags into their bowls of water and began to wipe at the crusted, dark blood that painted the boys. Their little hands were careful as they cleaned the wounds, moving aside when the Dag approached to take stock of their bodies.  


Trench stiffened when she reached a slender hand to his busted knee, watching her with a guarded expression as she whispered to herself before waving a pup over.  


“I’ll need a brace, bring my bag of tricks.”  


Furiosa left to show the others whose injuries weren’t so bad to their new quarters. Much of the Citadel had been reinvented to make room for the Milking Mothers, past-Breeders now called Life Givers, and the Wives themselves to have their own rooms and space. The garages, praise be to V8, were untouched, as was the place where the Boys had all slept in separate crews or Driver/Lancer pairs, but as the boys filtered in and found their beds, the forgotten truth roiled in them. The room was wide and sparse without their fallen brethren, and in the quiet of that truth, the war boys looked to Furiosa who stood framed by the doorway.  


“Rest, you can have a meal once you’ve slept.” Was all she said before she was gone, leaving them to look at each other, feeling as lost and mislead as they had been as pups.  


“She traitored him,” one of them declares, breaking the silence, and others nod in agreement.  


“She killed the Immortan though,” another voice, rough with reverence, “She’s Immortan now.”  


Ace waved his hands in front of himself in a negating gesture, shaking his head as he finally spoke up.  


“Now, now, Furiosa is not Immortan. She has earned our respect in the past and as an Imperator we will follow her orders. None of ya will be gettin’ it in your heads to go against her, you hear me?” He spoke like he was teaching new pups and in a way, he figured they were. What are warriors in a world where there is no war? “She said to sleep and that’s what we’ll do.” Ace nodded once in finality and eased himself down against his ledge, his hands massaging the aching muscle of his thigh.  


The others agreed, having been raised by the Ace and never forgetting his kindness and wisdom, and settled without another word on the issue. They’d hash it out at meal time, answer the questions that each of them was thinking. But instead of taking to their usual bunks, many grouped together in huddles of limbs and muscle, unable to brave the nap alone. Each was careful as they nudged their heads against eachother’s backs and nuzzled into warm throats, cold toes curling against calves, their hands seeking each other in a way that Ace knew was both healing and comfort. He didn’t envy them as they left him alone, falling into exhaustion fueled slumber like cars running out of guzzoline. For a while he spent his time simply counting each of them, taking stock, and hoped that more would arrive from the dunes of powered sands, wanting to be lifted.  


Briefly he wondered what they had all survived out there on the Fury Road, what they had gone up against when Furiosa angered Immortan Joe. He felt older than he remembers ever feeling, the image of Furiosa at the top of the lift looking down on them like they too were Wretched seared in him as he recalls looking down at her, when she was barely as tall as his knee, in the same way.  


When he was sure the boys were asleep, he stood with creaking bones and headed out the door, knowing where he’d find his Boss.  
\--------------------------------------------------------------  


Cheedo’s young face was drawn in a sour frown when Furiosa found her in the Mess Hall, hands dusted white with flour as she kneaded dough.  


“Are you really going to let them stay?” She asked, a weak accusation, and something trained into Furiosa wanted to snap at the girl. Instead she kept walking past the tables, towards the liberated Milking Mothers.  


“There’s fifteen boys that the Dag is tending to and twenty sleeping in the barracks. Need to make sure there’s enough for them to eat once they’re up,” Furiosa ordered, the Mothers nodding in understanding as they set to mixing rice and water, one of them sending a pup to collect spices from the hanging garden.  


“You aren’t going to feed them, are you?” Cheedo asked, appalled at the idea of giving food away to the men who had fought to rip them from Furiosa and back to Joe. “This isn’t right, they’re monsters-”  


“They were things, just like you and me. We all wear the same brand. Their world is just different than yours.” Furiosa turned to catch her eye and Cheedo swallowed a ribbon of anger. She felt betrayed as Furiosa added kindling to the brick stoves and gave orders to make more bread. Food to feed the wolves that had tried to eat them.  


“Furiosa, The Dag says that she’s done all she can for them,” Toast’s voice turned the corner as she reported in, “Though she wants to siphon blood to the weaker ones.”  


“After they’ve eaten we’ll set up a system. We will all talk later on how things are going to run. For now, let them sleep and get the meal ready.”  


“What about-?” But Toast didn’t finish her thought as Furiosa stalked out of the kitchen, too preoccupied in her own head to worry about manners.  


The Sisters looked at each other before returning to their tasks, Cheedo pounding the dough irritably as she thought of how Furiosa was turning on the women, forcing them to be slaves again to men's needs.  


“Toast, doesn’t it seem wrong? We are cooking for them, mending them, even after what’s happened. It isn’t right!”  


“Then don’t do it.” Toast shrugged, rolling the toothpick between her lips as she went back to her garage, already needing space from tumult brewing.  
\--------------------------------------------------------------  


After ten thousand days of watching pups and subsequently babysitting War Boys, the Ace had cultivated what the children would call a sixth sense. If a crew spent two weeks patching an engine and no one could figure out why it still wouldn’t run, the Ace could take two sweeping looks and know exactly what to do, as if he had simply asked the engine what was wrong. He could read by the flush of their cheeks or the nasally pitch of their voices when War Boys were getting too sick for a raid and he had an uncanny ability of catching pups before they got up to too much trouble. Because of this, Furiosa wasn’t astonished that the Ace found her hide out.  


His boots clicked as he came to a stop behind her in the garage, putting enough distance between them that no unwarranted attacks could strike without a ready defense, just like he’d taught her when she became a War Boy.  


“You looked good up there. In charge.” He sounded like he was wheezing a little and Furiosa had an inkling he punctured a lung. “The Wretched like you. Always have. That’s good.” His small talk is shit, like always, but there’s sincerity in his voice that belies his unenthusiastic tone. Ace almost sounds proud.  


“I pushed you off the rig.”  


“It was a good swing. I had to snap the nose back in place. You learned well.” He nodded in agreement and ducked his head to smile at her when she faced him.  


“Ace if you’re looking for an apology, I can’t give you one.”  


“Didn’t expect you to. Could never make you wanna do anything you didn’t.” It’s as her eyes study him, from his tattered boots to this crooked nose, that he closes the distance slowly. He doesn’t fear her but he respects the fragile thing between them, her need for space. “I heard rumors that you killed him.”  
Furiosa nods, once, and locks their gazes.  


“Good girl.”  


Her eyes widen at his honesty and if he hadn’t have seen her grow for seven thousand days, he might he thought she didn’t believe him. Instead, he knew she was thankful. They were magnetically pulled then, like other times before when she sought his council as a Pup and later his loyalty when she became Imperator, and they pressed their foreheads together, careful of his sore nose as she embraced him.  


“You still tried to choke me,” she softly reminds into the dusty crook of his shoulder and he tenses at the memory. He had never been rough with her, except when they sparred in the pits, and always the Ace made sure she understood he wasn’t a threat. He wasn’t known for his temper but Furiosa knew it was there now. “Don’t worry. You had to. I had turned on the Immortan, I was a thief and I endangered the crew. I deserved that.”  


“Well, that’s a small part of it, yeah,” he confessed as they drew away, one of his thick jointed hands rubbing at the dried grease of his forehead. His goggles are missing and Furiosa doesn’t ever remember him looking so unguarded. “Boss, you know I trust you. Overthrowing regimes ain’t nothing new. Happened all the time back in the Before. But I’ve seen you grow, watched what you had to overcome to get where you are. I thought you were throwin’ away that hard work, ruining everything you accomplished.”  


Furiosa finds the answer more mature than anything she’s ever heard and closes her eyes against the sting. Ace had seen to it that she was treated as an equal among the Boys, had watched as she made Lancer, helped her strengthen her balance to try for Polecat, and was the one who decorated her with her Imperator marks when she ranked up. Ace had traded in Bartertown for strips of cotton to bind her breasts when she grew into them and showed her how to use wool and cellulose bandages for her bleeding when she became of age. She worked through her cramps and the boys were none the wiser, but some nights, when she was sick and pained, she’d curl against Ace’s back and let herself feel protected. On occasions, he’d break off a sliver of chocolate from his stash, and though Furiosa swore she didn’t like sweets, was promised that it’d help with the worst of it. She once joked that he knew so much about women’s’ monthly times that he must bleed for a week as well, to which they had shared a laugh and dropped the subject.  


He was at once Father and Brother, a constant in her life since the first night at the Citadel. Of course he doesn’t understand why she hadn’t included him on her escape.  


“I wasn’t sacrificing you or the crew. The entire thing was just unlucky from the start.”  


Ace shrugs as if telling her to forget about it but his eyes are still searching hers for answers. It’ll all have to wait though when she hears footsteps on the stone leading to her garage.  


“Furiosa, the Mothers filled the tubs with water so it can warm in the sun. They thought the boys might want bathes-” Capable stops in the archway, expression stunned when she sees Furiosa and Ace together.  


Ace seems to understand he’s crossing a boundary for Capable and moves away, embarrassed for Furiosa who recovers and nods to the sister.  


“Good, tell the others to get ready for the meal. We all need to be present so as to decide the changes to be made.”  


“Yes ma’am.” Capable smiles but shifts her eyes between Furiosa and the older War Boy. She knows Furiosa is more than proficient enough to handle herself alone and Nux had been proof that not all men were blood thirsty and ravenous. And yet Capable didn’t see the strong female leader she had promised to follow to the Green Place with the Many Mothers. 

This was a woman who had evolved past gender and was torn now between the lines. “Nice to meet you.” She nodded to Ace and waved before she left, sneaking one last look back at them, two beings who could never return to their old worlds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From the first time I saw the movie MMFR, I always had the idea that Ace, while thoroughly pissed that she's sentenced the crew to death via storm without escape, is also upset that she's ruined all her hard work getting to be Imperator and driver of the War Rig.  
> Hope you enjoyed.  
> And are ready for more. :)


	4. The Decision

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Sisters learn a little more about War Boys through observation and Furiosa lays down the foundation of their new life at the Citadel.

War Boys slept like the dead, their legs limp and twitching in dreams, arms stiff around each other as if set in rigor mortis. From the doorway, Capable observes and takes notes, faintly remembering the story of Frankenstein's monster. The scientist used divvied corpses to craft misunderstood evil in man's image and she sees a bit of the story unwoven in front of her now. The boys were still bleached bone white, their eyes shifting in REM sleep behind the black grease. Their sockets looked sunken, like skeleton eyes, but she knew most of the men were hearty, well worked, and more than proficient at surviving. The scars on their bodies, bruised and fresh with their swollen, red blisters told stories Capable didn't think she'd have time to hear if she was to listen.

Some of the worse ones breathed wetly, their chests hollowed as they hack through a terrible cough, and she watched, intrigued, as those around him woke and tried to push him on his side, his stomach, anything to get him breathing again. The scrawnier ones shivered with fever, their sweat slicked foreheads pressed into their brothers' chests as they held them tighter, murmuring words against them as they faded in and out of their dreams. These boys looked nothing like the ones she had seen chasing them down, their whispered, trembling words of comfort foreign to her. Capable was familiar with their collective chanting to V8, the way Joe told the sister-wives to be wary of the War Boys because they were, 'dangerous, feral, rabid. Will tear you apart. Trained well for their purpose. It's all they're good for.'

"What's all this?"

Capable hadn't heard the Dag's boots approaching and when she looked her way, she noticed her feet were bare. "Furiosa says we need to wear shoes here," Capable scolded. "Unlike the desert and our rooms, people are careless out here. There are screws and things all scattered about."

"My feet are swelling," The Dag said as if that won the argument and Capable left it alone. The Dag's eyes didn't leave the tangled briar of the War Boys as she noted, "They sleep like animals."

"That's all they've ever been treated as. Battle fodder…" The word in her mouth tastes different and, aloud, it ever sounds odd compared to how Angharad had said it. Maybe it was how Nux had looked; lips chromed and cracked, eyes vacant as he lamented about disappointing his Immortan. They were snarled in a thicket of lies and in their short, spontaneous half-lives, Capable feels Furiosa's words glut with meaning.

It's all about points of view.

Cars and Valhalla were all these boys knew.

"How are we going to wake the sleeping beautes?" The Dag asked as she picked at the root salve stuck under her finger nails. "Used to be a bugle call. Reveille…"

"That was for soldiers long ago," Toast interrupted as she stepped in from the garages, her hands oily as she wiped them on her pants. "Ask Furiosa, she'll know how-"

"You just yell," came a voice from the hallway, accented and obvious. Capable recognized him as the older War Boy who had been with Furiosa, the one that the Pups kept reverently calling, 'The Ace'. She watched him take a deep breath before he bellowed, "Oy, you worthless Pups! Boss said a nap not a whole day of lazin' about! Rusty, backseat drivers, the whole lot of ya!"

The Boys all scrambled awake, a dust storm of waving limbs as they pulled each other by their breeches, hands shoving others aside, aware and alert in a way that made Capable question if they'd been asleep this whole time.

The Dag looked unimpressed as the boys tried to form into their crews and then into pairs, the feat impossible with so many of them missing. Altogether they looked more like lost meerkats as they popped up and stood tall for the lead War Boy's inspection.

"That's inhumane," she said as the Ace crossed his arms and smiled proudly at the boys.

"It's all they know," he stated simply, walking forward to greet them. But instead of lowering their heads, eyes averted like the Dag had expected, they greeted the man with a shining smile and gathered around as he waved them in. Eyes then landed on the sisters as the boys spotted them, sneaking curious glances when their leader wasn't watching, taking turns trying to discern what to make of the women.

"We need to be getting to the kitchens; Furiosa wants to hold the meeting soon," Capable tried to direct the conversation, unsure of what would happen if they had it out here. The boys looked pitiful, more nonthreatening that she ever remembers but that doesn't mean they wouldn't snap like wounded animals.

The Ace clapped his hands together, garnering attention from everyone as he said, "You heard her. Chow time." And with that, he led he group out, the boys sticking close together as they passed the sisters, eyeing the women as if they might bite.

Toast followed, keeping enough distance that she could hear their gossiping but she couldn't smell them, their sweat and grime nauseating in masse. Capable and the Dag walked side by side behind but no one said a word as they passed through the catacombs, making the trek to the brick kitchens in silence.

\--------------------------------------------------------

Bowls of potatoes and meat were set in the middle of the long tables, yeast rolls stacked steaming and fresh on cracked plates to the side. The Boys hurried to grab the meals, shoving and yanking brothers out of the way as they fought for the first hot food they'd had in a week. The Ace pulled boys off of each other and set them down to eat, glaring when other looked as if they might start a fight.

"There's enough, stop squabblin'," He reprimanded and sat at the end of the table, picking potatoes out of the stew with his fingers. Toast wrinkled her nose at how greedy the boys were, stuffing rolls into their mouths two at a time, licking the juice from their fingers, slurping and gnashing as they glutted themselves.

"What slobs."

"They don't know any better," Capable tried to reason as she watched one boy lick a few rolls so no one else would take them, only for another boy to eat them anyway, as if in challenge. "We'll just have to teach them."

It was warm here, with the wood ovens and no exit for their heat, and for a few moments they enjoyed the warm atmosphere with light conversations, their words covering the sounds of their starving repast. Then, once most of them steadied, picking at the remains and licking the broth from the sides of the bowls, the wooden door at the kitchen's exit whined on its rusty hinges, introducing Furiosa as she paced in. Her mechanical arm was missing, as was her paint and the gun she usually holstered on her belt, but her face was hardened like she was about to lead them to war.

Capable watched the Boys slow their hastened hunger, eyes following her movement as if to try and detect what she would say and do. None of them spoke but the Ace nodded to her and there was a surge of speech between their shared gaze. If there was anything Capable had learned, it was that Furiosa was a woman of many words and yet few of them ever made it past her lips. Instead, her eyes spoke, deep and defenseless when she looked at people who understood her language. Max had been that sort of linguist, cut from the same cloth she had been, and The Ace seemed to be another. Furiosa stopped at the head of the table, her shoulders strong, chin raised as she stood tall and immovable over them. They all waited to hear her speak.

"I want to make one thing clear. Immortan Joe has blinded you to many things. I sought to leave this world behind, to go back to my home, and he fought that decision. He used you try and take me out. As you can see, it was unsuccessful." Unlike other great speakers Capable had read about, Furiosa did not pace, did not raise her voice, and never changed the cold tone of her words. She was stating facts not trying to win them over. "I won't make any of you stay or adhere to the new regime which will be set in place. But I will say that I will not drive you out of here. This is as much your home as it is ours. The garages will stay open and I will continue to lead raids and convoys. All that will be asked of you is understanding and patience as we move toward a better life."

The Boys stayed glued in place, as if the air had been sucked from the room, freeze-drying them. Then, the Ace stood, gritting his teeth against the ache in his knees, and he clasped her hand between them, tapping foreheads. The reaction was instant, the rest of the boys exploding into questions as Furiosa turned her attention back to them, answering what she could. Most of the details hadn't been worked out, but overall, the boys all came to terms with the idea of staying. Where else did they have to go?

But most of all, Furiosa had proven to them something that Joe had never done. They had seen her come up through the ranks, she had fought alongside most of them, and if not on the same crew, then they had heard the glorious accounts of her deeds preformed on the Fury Road from other star crossed War Boys. Most had never seen Joe in the flesh and without the rumors the Imperators spread; he could have easily been a myth. But Furiosa was here, was tangible and offering answers. She had slain the Immortan. She was inexorable.

Ace watched at her side as the boys crowded her; cautious still as they mingled, and it was again that Capable was witness to the deep bond of War Boys. It didn't make sense, how aggressive they could be in the heat of combat, and yet their roughness was evident in how they knocked foreheads, drew each other into headlocks, and bit at each other when pushed too hard. They were rough with Furiosa too and she seemed content as they fell back into their old ways. Ace stood with his arms crossed, his shoulder bumping hers every so often as the Boys exhausted all their questions.

"She's different with them," Toast says beneath her breath and the Dag nods, a hand tracing circles over her bellybutton, no doubt thinking about the baby stirring within her.

"She's a War Boy…" Capable admits and there's something in that realization that makes Toast turn and storm out.

In the background, the questions keep coming, rapid fire and demanding, but the one that derails Capable's thoughts is asked by the masked Polecat who had helped the guitarist lay down in the infirmary.

"Will we go salvage the wreckage at the mountain pass?"

And though Capable had witnessed Nux's sacrifice, watched the War Rig tip top-heavy in a blaze of collected chaos, she felt a seed of hope crack open behind her chest. The vine twisted from that shell when Furiosa nodded in answer, promising they would head out to recover what they could, machines and Boys.


	5. Water Gives Life and Life Gives Purpose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The War Boys get a much needed Bath and Furiosa has a surprise for her Ace.

Water within the Citadel wasn't uncommon, leaking from crevices in the walls and collecting in the gouged stone, forming puddles on the levels closest to the water pumps. The water wasn't drinkable after being treaded through by the foot traffic and swirled with electric pastels of leaked oil, but sometimes, if thirsty enough, the Boys would press their lips to the rough, cracked stone and suck at the dribbling Aqua Cola.

Toast watches a few of them try that now as they pass through the corridors toward one of the larger water pools, their steps lethargic after their meal, looking weary and sated as they follow in a shambling group, some stretching and popping their shoulders and necks. None of them has come this far up the Citadel levels before, so they're eager to look around at how Imperators lived, and stood slack jawed when they set their eyes on the bathing room.

The Life Givers were passing buckets of sun warmed water down like an assembly line and poured them into the cold pool, hoping it cut some of the chill. The Boys didn't seem to mind as they hastily began pulling at their knotted belts, unzipping pants and yanking on the ties for their boots so they could wash the blood and grit of failure from them. Bathes were precious, earned, divine, and in the rush for that cleansing, they almost missed Furiosa's scolding.

"Hey!" She barked and when barely any of them looked up from their undressing, she nodded to Toast, who pulled a Magnum from her tool belt and fired a warning shot in the air. The Boys instantly stilled, eyes all focusing on Toast and her handgun, before they saw she was staring behind them, and they turned slowly to see Furiosa.

"You will behave like people. You will thank the Life Givers for their hard work and I don't want to see any horse play," Furiosa remembers baths down with War Boys before she became Imperator and was able to steal time alone to wash. Dingy water, roughhousing, and boys grabbing at each other in a show of dominance. "Clean up and get out." She ended tersely, waving at them to continue as she turned back to the table in the corner. Cotton towels and sheets were freshly scrubbed and folded for them to dry off with and clean rags had been set aside. She picked the stack up and handed them to the Life Givers, instructing them to help the Boys in case they missed any spots.

It didn't take long for the boys to have left their things in piles and step to the edge of the water, peering down at its smooth, mirrored surface as if they were seeing themselves for the first time. They whispered a little to themselves, saying small remarks under their breath like, "How shine," and "Glory me," before Hatch dared to disturb the smooth glasslike mirage by stepping down into the pool. He was ringed by the ripples, the tepid pool lapping up to his waist and he waved to the rest of them, each sliding in and marveling at the feel. They busied themselves with scrubbing their knuckles over their skin, blunt nails scratching off the dried clay, and Toast was astounded as she saw the War Boys transform into a range of colors.

Some were pink and porcelain beneath their paint, others dark skinned, much darker than her, while others were freckled and tanned. They weren't recognizable without their war markings, and some even laughed at each other over their skin tones, forgetting that they weren't all white-washed underneath. They dunked beneath the water and washed until the black grease ringing their eyes and lining their lips dripped down their cheeks in spiked lines, and the brothers pushed palms over each other cheeks to smudge the paint.

Ace had undressed farthest away from the women not because he was self-conscious but because he still believed that women and men shouldn't go undressing in each other's company, and contentedly washed without anyone's help. His mind was like a hive of shaken bees as his thoughts fought to the foreground, wondering if Furiosa's idea of rebuilding was going to work. The Boys were content now with all her handouts but what if they grew too complacent? He didn't doubt they would be ready to do war when asked of them but would they be able to relearn most of their lives? Ace looked up from picking at a scab on his arm to size up the Boys and worried if any of them were to try and buck the system, what would happen? Revolt was still on the table, would they have it in them to wipe out the things they'd done in the past and continue on? What of V8 and the religion? What of Valhalla? Could you still go?

"I smell smoke, you must be thinking too hard," Furiosa's soft voice came from behind him, and he wondered if maybe he was going deaf if he couldn't hear her sneak up on him.

"It's nothin'." He tightened his jaw into a thin smile and faltered when she unbuckled her boots and set to rolling her pants up past her knees. "Boss?" Ace asked as he watched her kneel at the lip pf the pool and then dip her bare calves into the water.

"Come here," she beckoned with curled fingers and there wasn't any way Ace could refuse. He stopped almost out of reach, letting her put her flesh and bone hand on his shoulder to pull him closer, her knees on either side of his hips. From her pocket she drew a rag and dipped it into the water before she grazed it over his splotchy paint. He grit his teeth against the sting of his mottled bruises when she passed them roughly but she was gentle with him like she had always been, cleansing him like it was a baptism, like she was rinsing the blood and sin from him with each splash of water. Furiosa has to look down to catch his eyes from her vantage point, and she keeps her face neutral as she studies the cluster of tumors mangled on his neck. Her lame arm, the one she lost in a raid gone bad, the one he remembers seeing bandaged and bloody and just knowing this would be the end of her, the reason she was thrown out, is brought to his lumps and feels at them as if to wipe those too from his body.

Suddenly, Ace feels so much older than he remembers being, looking up a Furiosa who hasn't been a Pup for what seems like a hundred thousand days, can barely remember what she was like before she became the strong, independent woman who's taking care of him now. He had noticed her bound ribs and midsection, the blood seeping the bandages from what looked like two wounds. Her eye is also puffy with swelling, and he wonders again what she had endured to come back alive. And even in recovery, she's here above him, tending to him sweetly as she makes a broad stroke over his forehead to smear his earned black paint.

The sounds of the Life Givers trying to wash behind War Boy's ears, to reach the stripes of white between their shoulders, and fussing in the way that only mothers could, echoed in the stone room, accompanied with the splashing water and grumbling from the War Boys as the women scrubbed them. They were on their best behavior though, knowing that even if Furiosa looked engaged, she was still keeping watch. So they bowed their heads and let the Mothers scrub them, filling buckets with the water and rinsing them off to start again.

Finally, when they were as clean as they were going to get, they pulled themselves out of the bath and rubbed dry with the towels, standing by the stone window so the sun would warm them. Eva, one of the older Mothers, handed out new sets of pants which had been meant for newly promoted Boys, and Toast watched curiously as they emptied the pockets of their ragged old things and started filling the new ones. War Boys were packrats and jangled when they ran due to the tools and loose parts they kept, just in case.

Furiosa helped Ace from the bath, knowing his knee was aching him, but let him dry himself as she nodded at the brand new, shiny boys.

"Where's the paint, Boss?" One of them asked, looking almost embarrassed at being dressed but not painted. And truth be told, they looked more naked now than before. The paint was mostly used to make the boys indistinguishable from each other; to Joe they were faceless soldiers, but also because the white paint helped protect them from the blistering sun. The black grease was earned in stages, starting with the eyes once you could ride on a car to help deflect the blinding desert light, and then covering forehead and scalp to show seniority. While the paint was understandable for runs and raids, they didn't need to live in it. But keeping a hierarchy would be prudent for many reasons. It was something they knew. It was an echo of Joe's regime but it was mostly harmless.

"Still down by the Alter. Go on, you're dismissed." Furiosa let them run out the doors, noticing how some stopped and waved back at the Mothers in thanks, all eager to reapply their new paint and pray to V8.

Capable was helping The Dag retie a splint around a Polecat's yellow bruised leg when she heard the thunder of War Boys come rolling in from the stairs. Cheedo stepped up onto one of the empty stone benches to avoid the bedlam of the stampede, eyes wide when she saw the bare skin of the Boys, all their markings gone, somehow more wild and foreign then when dressed for war. The Dag hissed as they passed, telling them to stop the noise, this was a place for peace and healing, and they settled a bit as they approached the Wheel Alter towering in the room next to the Chop Shop.

The Boys waved and greeted their sick brethren laid up on the benches, and promised to come back after their ritual, avoiding the women as they filed into the milky, dusted light illuminating the room of worship. They each bowed their heads and threaded their fingers, whispering their prayers, some thanking V8 for letting the fallen War Boys ride to Valhalla, others asking for guidance in this time of uncertainty, and Ace found himself curling his back low beneath his raised hands as he beseeched V8 to give back any other War Boys who were alive out there in the sands. The empty passageways of the Citadel were haunting and no matter how the Boys begged to be Witnessed, he knew that most would rather their Drivers and Lancers, Polecats and brothers, come staggering in from the wastelands.

Next came the clay and paint, slurried onto their forearms and torsos, aiding each other to get their backs. Those who could grow hair shaved with the shears, watching their distorted reflections in an old, polished bumper as they worked.

Ace stood in line for the white, bumping shoulders with those who were horse playing around, when he caught sight of Furiosa walking in, feet and legs still bare from the bath. He wonders how he must look, old enough to be Father to most of them, surrounded with these rough youths, a rock in the middle of a flowing stream.

"You ain't gotta baby sit them," he assured her as she watched them scoop the wet clay and blow white dust onto each other. "I'll look after everything."

"I know you will." Her tone was blessedly proud, resolute as if she hadn't said a truer thing, and then she flicked her eyes to pin him. She didn't search his face like how others would have, just stared him right in the eye as if to read his mind. "Don't paint."

He put his hands on his hips and shifted his weight, breaking her gaze to spit beside his boots. "Why not?" He didn't often push for explanations, just nodded and hung on for the ride, but this was something he wanted to hear her say, not assume.

Furiosa drew in a breath, deep enough to make her stitched sides to sting, and crossed her arms the best she could. "I remember when I met you," Furiosa says and Ace remembers too, how she was still wrapped in muslin and snarling at the Imperator Joe had assigned to throw her out. That was before his tumors mangled his strong shoulders and when the Immortan's steel mark hung from his belt.

"You weren't painted then."

"I wasn't sick then," he counters, stepping out of line so he could have this conversation away from the others. Finding out he wasn't a full-life had happened over a few hundred days, massaging the bumps on his throat at night, hoping they'd go away in time. Once he'd been found out, the other Imperators wasted no time in busting him back to War Boy status, their sneers of 'half-life' making him feel diseased and deceitful, like he'd been lying his entire life.

Furiosa remembers Ace's fall from fortune, his bruises and the first, slow beginnings of the sickness. That was after she had been promoted to the War Rig, and wasn't about to let him disappear into the sulking mass of the Wretched.

"This is now." And that seems to be the end of the conversation as she guides him past the clay and to the black grease, a small, satisfied smile brightening her as he ducks his head to apply the thick coat.

The Boys understand what's happening and cheer him on, praising him as if he's been given a long awaited, well deserved promotion, and in their eyes, it is. He raised them, he had a hand in all of their training and when he rode on their crews, there was nobody who bowed deeper or witnessed truer than The Ace.

Sounds of celebration rushed forth then as the War Boys chanted and cheered him on until he was done, raising up proud and tall, accepting claps on the back and feeling much more than alive. But the only thing that mattered in the commotion was Furiosa's gaze, sparkling with pride as she quirked a knowing smile and nodded to him, before she ducked out of the cavern and back to the sisters in the Chop Shop.


	6. The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Memories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Max finds something salvageable at the mountain pass.

The mountain pass had become a graveyard of twisted hot metal gleaming in the sun's rays, the stench of carnage and diesel a wafting body as Max navigates through the ruins. He'd borrowed a bike from the Citadel's Arsenal and hoped to return here, find something in the mess that was worth keeping.

The proximity of Furiosa made him uneasy in a way he hadn't felt in years, driving him to scour the bones of the War Parties in search of something drivable, something to get him far away from the new Green Place. Max was still dizzy with blood loss and his guts felt like they were grinding meat inside him as he remembers the strength in Furiosa as she rose with the others, letting him know that she understood his leaving and expects his return. It was adrenaline that had made his hand heavy on the accelerator, gunning like lightening out of her reach.

As he neared the massive body of the thrown War Rig, laid on her side like another he had wrecked some time ago, the voices in his mind scatter, the new ones demanding why he had killed their God and destroyed over 10,000 days of religion. Max cleared them with a shake of his head.

He searches the mangled cars for any sign of the girl child to be leading him somewhere. Instead he saw a small group of bodies resting beneath the fallen speaker systems of the wagon, and the only reason he knows they are alive is because these ones are silent.

The closer he dares to climb, the more detail shines in the small shadow of their hiding spot, and he can make out the thick wild curls of a Vuvalini mother, the black mask of a Polecat, and the bodies of War Boys all huddled together.

The mother seems to be speaking, her hands gesturing in the way great story tellers always do, and the Boys around her are listening, leaning on each other as they watch her weave a tale from thin air. Max spares a look back at his bike and then down below, weighing the options. There's no doubt that if he engages, he'll end up taking them back to the Citadel. And a small voice in him smiles, tells him that's all right, checking back in wouldn't do any harm.

Cautious by principle, Max lurks in the skirts of the jagged mountains as long as he can afford, edging close enough to hear the old woman's words drift by on the wind, and for a moment he stills and simply listens.

"...and there were trees so wide you couldn't fit your arms around them, so tall that their green leaves blotted out the sun itself."

Max peeked around the large tire of the War Rig to see the rag tag audience enraptured, eyes focused on the woman's story as if they were witnessing her speak a tree into existence.

"And my son, he wasn't much older than you lot, he would shimmy up the branches and twist apples from the stems," she curled her arthritic hand the best she could, "Fruit this big," she shook her fist, "waxy and smooth, red as a sunburn, but it's insides were crisp and watery, the kind that makes you forget thirst."

The story coaxes something familiar from Max, the memory of Jessie cutting wedges of the fruit for Sprog to snack on coming back as if asked, and he salivates at the remembrance of taste.

The Boys around her are leaning forward as she continues to wax poetic about the scent of orchards and cracking pecans, the taste of honey suckle, and how to tell the ripeness of a watermelon. All of it is eaten up by the boys, savoring the delicate feel of the knowledge as if they could save it for seconds later. Max doesn't think any of them know what real fruit looks like, let alone how it feels on the tongue, but he can tell they are picturing the rinds of oranges and the fuzz of whole peaches as if they are forbidden fantasies.

The woman pauses and shuffles her sore legs in the sand as she settles back into her memories, face hidden as Max moves around the tanker to get closer.

"Wish you coulda seen it." Her voice is weary and parched. "The kind of place that makes you forget the evil in this world."

There's the crunch of glass beneath his boot and the nearest War Boy hears it, popping up defensively as he readies to fire his last arrow at Max.

But Max raises his hands in surrender, head down but eyes hot steel as he watches the group shift and tighten defensively. The Vuvalini recognizes him though, her grey eyes widening as if she's seeing a ghost, and waves him excitedly over, soothing the others with a small, "He's all right, this here is your average puppy," as an explanation.

The Boys still glare at him though, uneasy with his revolver in its holster and the knife handle jutting from his boot, and no one moves as he drops his shoulders, scrunching his mouth in thought.

"Came back for..." Max looks around at all the cars tangled around them, black stains in the sand from their leaked oil, the stench of blood thick and surprising when a foul wind caught just right. It's then that he notices in the back row, propped alongside a War Boy whose paint almost looks yellow, is a face he was afraid would haunt him until the end of his days, blue eyes drawing attention away from the bloody lines of his lips and the two bulbous tumors on the crux of his shoulder.


	7. You Have Become the Monsters You Fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plans to go salvage the wreckage by the pass begins, while The Dag brings to light a secret that threatens their faith in Furiosa.

The Organic Mechanic's Chop Shop was a place that War Boys circumvented if possible, the pitiable cries of their sick comrades haunting each corridor, the rusted blood of previous patients stained on the stone. The air was dense with the sting of antiseptic and the rancid scent of rot, the sort that made older war boys crinkle their nose and worry about infection while Pups gagged when they walked by.

But today it was full with broken War Boys, each one kept immobilized by their wounds or stuck beneath the quiet stare of their new Organic Mechanic, the Vuvalini Mother who was named Althia, healer. She admitted to being a nurse in the Before Time, something that happened so long ago she often forgot, and had performed surgeries, set broken bones, and birthed every child that the Many Mothers had carried. The Dag liked how she was strict with her medical procedures, not afraid of the War Boys who bit and spit and refused to admit what was wrong, but Althia also had a tender hand when she tended to each.

Cheedo swallowed against the bile in her throat as she watched Althia tend to the open wound splitting a War Boy's shoulder. He thrashed his head, teeth clenching around the cloth they threaded in his mouth to stop him from screaming, and the Dag just held tighter to the ends of the rag, gritting her teeth against his strength when Althia pricked him with the stitching needle.

Some of the other Boys watched on, a few with fascination, others with caution, but most, who The Dag guessed had spent their fair share of time here in recovery, tried to sleep or talked quietly amongst each other, ignoring the muffled pain as the older woman made quick, tight stiches, closing the wound as if zipping up a jacket.

As Dag pulled down hard, sensing him jerk, she felt warmth wet her hands, and noticed that the War Boy was leaking from his clenched eyes, moaning hoarsely when Althia tugged at the thread, testing her work.

"Almost done, just seven centimeters to go." Her voice was breathless and just as empathetic as when she had told Max what was happening to Furiosa as she faded on the Gigahorse. "There we go, wasn't that bad." Althia smiled as she knotted the twine and snipped the extra length with the edge of her knife against her thumb. The Dag pulled the gag from his mouth and brought her finger to her lips, tasting the salt of his tears. The War Boy took a few heaving breaths before he brought a tentative hand to the chords of his neck, fingertips grazing the swollen ridges of his stitches.

He opened his eyes and wiped roughly at the wet streaks on his face, wincing at the pull in his shoulder as he tried to sit up. Cheedo offered a hand but he knocked it away and The Dag bared her teeth at him, threatened.

"She's trying to help you."

"I don't need help," he barked, narrowing his eyes as he got nose to nose with Dag.

The pair reminded Althia of cats and dogs, and before it got out of hand she stood from the stone perch and snapped her fingers.

"None of this, not here where the sick are trying to rest. Save it for another day."

The Dag didn't budge until Cheedo grabbed her by the crook of her elbow and coaxed her away, but not without Dag hissing all sorts of dirty names in his direction, the War Boy spitting at her in retaliation.

"Furiosa wants us to be nice," Cheedo reminded her softly as they went back to Althia's medical pouch, searching for another spool of thread and more salve. "Besides, you don't need to leap to my rescue. They don't scare me." Her thought of, 'not anymore' hung between them as The Dag went to the next Boy, assessing him like she had been taught.

One of his blackened eyes was swollen shut, though the lid was riven and quivering. The nose was broken and his hairless arms were scabbed in long, hot streaks of burns. But what caught The Dag's attention were the thick staples that pinched a line from each shoulder down to his sternum, missing his nipples just barely, giving him an odd, lumpy V across his chest. It was the kind of carving that was deliberate, but not in the traditional tattooing style or branding the others used. This was for a purpose. It was medical.

She drew her glare back up to the War Boy's one working eye, searching the green marble as if to read all the answers in its reflection.

"Why'd you do it?" She demanded, and at the Boy's confused scowl, she too wondered what she meant, because the world grew suddenly small, a spot light cutting the darkness to rest on this one War Boy like it was Chekhov's Revolver.

Althia was beside her then, the needle between her teeth as she unthreaded twine from the bobbin. "Girlie, that's some shiner you have there. Mind if I take a look?" She asked as she peered down at the poor warrior, who nodded and gave a gap toothed smile.

The Dag drew away from them, mouth slightly agape as she tried to conjure what her mind was demanding. Cheedo reached out a hand of comfort but didn't catch her before The Dag was bounding out of the room, her bare feet slapping hard against the stone.

"Must be bad if your assistant went runnin' like that," the War Boy spoke, voice light and sweet, and Cheedo suddenly knew what had startled The Dag.

\-----------------------------------------

"Need to set the tires, check the suspension, and patch that leak in the transmission. Lookin' at two days of work."

The Ace's news wasn't out of the ordinary; all of the cars left in the Citadel didn't run, or else they'd have been taken with Joe's war party for the chase. Hardly any of the Blackthumbs knew these cars, the original crews dead or gone, and most of the custom jobs were modified so heavily that it was near impossible to figure out what was needed to make them run. The Revheads assessed each model and guessed at what they could do, but then came the question of parts. Crews were led by a Driver who earned the frame and got help from other Blackthumbs to tune the machine, everyone pitching ideas for mods that would make them faster, lighter, easier to drive, shinier, more durable. But crews rarely shared secrets about their cars.

Furiosa was in the middle of lecturing all this to Capable and Toast as she dug through her own personal pile of junk, searching for anything that could be of use now that the Rig was gone.

Toast crossed her arms and leaned over Furiosa to peek inside the box, curious on what she had taken over the years. Growing up with the Motor Rats taught her that everything you needed to know about a person was in what they collected. "The garages are filled with parts though, there has to be something there." She pointed out when Furiosa didn't find whatever she was looking for, throwing a pair of needle nose pliers back into the box.

"Parts were either gifted by the Immortan and incorporated wherever they could, or traded for between other crews. Each garage is full of hoarded parts that are hardly interchangeable. Most wouldn't have been used for their original purpose anyway, its plan died with its crew." Capable hadn't heard so many words coming from Furiosa before, but the tone was familiar, as was they stress knotting her shoulders and the tense joints in her flesh hand.

"We War Boys might not have the book knowledge you have," Ace interjected as he caught Toast's gaze, arms crossed against his chest, "but we got good ideas," he tapped a finger to his temple, "and we never forget."

Furiosa cursed sharply as she stood, giving Ace a scowl, "And never wrote anything down either." But she had been the same way, her ideas and dreams all stored in her mind's eye, never carved on the walls or inked on fabric because she hadn't wanted anyone else to see it until her vehicle rolled out for the convoy, their jaws dropping in astonishment.

"Boss, I'm telling you, the Hauler will be the best bet. Might take a few more days but it can carry eight cars and thirty Boys. I think it's worth the effort."

"How much longer?"

Ace looked back at Talcum, a younger boy who was missing an eye, Grounded for life, and waited as he tilted his head back and forth, calculating.

"Bout six days, and that's if we find the right parts."

"We'll do it in four," Ace translated to Furiosa, turning to face her straight on as she put her hands on her hips, eyes downcast in thought. If there was anything worth taking from the wreckage, scavengers would be all over it once the fumes and fires died down. And War Boys still roaming the Salt would be at the mercy of any traveler who passed by, not to mention the harsh elements of the desert. They didn't have four days.

"Make it two," she finally decided and Talcum nodded hesitantly before he scurried back to the garages to relay the news.

Ace didn't argue the harsh time limit, instead, just stroked a hand over his bald head and waited for any other orders to follow. Toast watched him closely, noting that he looked younger without the white paint, his tanned hide covered in spotted abrasions and gnarled scars, his brands almost silver in the low torch light of the room. Even though he was Imperator now, he hasn't tried to usurp any of the control, still cast a glance to Furiosa before each of his answers as if he was seeking her blessing. It confused Toast, made her watch Furiosa closer with each encounter in the hopes of finding the secret to her power.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

Everyone turned toward The Dag's accusing voice as she came through the door, the very visage of righteous anger. Ace stepped to Furiosa as if to shield her but the Boss passed him, meeting Dag's flushed, twisted face.

"When were you going to tell us that there are War Girls?" She demanded in a low voice, her eyes wild, shoulders pressed flat like she was crouching to pounce.

"I thought it was obvious," Furiosa evenly stated, as if she had already anticipated this conversation, her responses mapped and catalogued. "I was a War Girl.

"That's different!"

Everyone stayed quiet then, as if a single change would be like a gun shot, upsetting whatever was on the cusp of shattering. Furiosa grit her teeth until her molars ached, a vein in her jaw twitching as she stared The Dag down, matching the childish anger with something more potent than a spark and guzzoline. The Dag sensed it, how their leader widened her stance, drew her shoulders back and lifted her chin so she had to cut her eyes to look down at her. But she wasn't going to back down, had already read the signs in Furiosa and knew she wasn't going to fight her, wouldn't resort to busting her for the accusation. Furiosa knew she was caught.

"Different?" Furiosa's brow furrowed in disbelief. The heat in her face made Capable uneasy, she had seen her go that still only one other time and that was right before she had tackled Max. "Did you think because I was once a wife that Joe gave me this position?" She threw her arms out, gesturing to the garage, the empty catacombs, the dying War Boys scouring for scrap. The Ace went to smooth a hand over her shoulder but she jerked from the touch, eyes still pinning The Dag in place. "That the Boys were told to play nice with me, that I was the first woman to become anything other than a Breeder?" Each word she spat out increased her volume until she was on the brink of yelling, her sharp words directed at Dag but everyone felt the hurt.

"She didn't mean nothing by it," Ace said lowly, though he didn't try to touch her this time.

Capable stepped forward and didn't shrink back when Furiosa's eyes sliced a path to stop her, silently telling her not to move. "Furiosa, of course we didn't think that." Her voice was soft and soothing like a mother's was, and as Furiosa looked at the sisters, each of them dressed in an odd assortment of their muslin wraps, War Boy pants, and Vuvalini trinkets, she wanted to scream. They didn't understand. They were just playing pretend while Furiosa and the other Girls who had come before and after her had fought for this.

The Dag felt like her boots had sprouted roots, locking her beneath Furiosa's glare once again. She wasn't afraid of her but something about the Ace's body language was making her skin feel prickly. He looked like he was ready to grab Furiosa in case she suddenly went feral and from the clenching muscles in her bare arm and the chords of her neck, Dag knew she'd fight him. But they were already here, she had pushed this far and she might as well spill everything while the floor was open and there was someone to mediate.

"I don't understand how you flourished beneath all of this violence. You made yourself what you are, a warrior, a fighter! You can't come back from that; you've got Boy written all over you. Betrayal is what it is, to all of us. You talked about the Green Place, knitted these stories about your Many Mothers and the soft petals of flowers, the cool pools of water, and even if it was still there, you could never go back to that, not with what you've done. You crave this chaos, I know you do! You've cultivated all this anger and you're just like them, the rest of those awful Boys you keep pretending aren't vicious men!" The Dag let all the words come to her like a frenzied desert wind, a flurry of blasting sand and high noon heat. "You've turned on your heritage; you've spit in the face of womenhood by letting these men tear your identity from you and all those other girls!"

"Dag, stop it!" Capable admonished, the anger in the room feeding her tone. The adrenaline made her nerves feel twitchy but before she could do anything substantial, Furiosa turned on her heel with military precision and strode out, Ace curtly following her as if to warn whoever was in her way.

Toast marched up to Dag, disbelief clear in her dark eyes. "Where did all that come from?" She accused, feeling as if she had personally told Furiosa off with how frank Dag had been.

"Althia is stitching up a girl right now who cut her breasts off in order to be a part of all this," The Dag bit out, her hair a blond curtain that shielded her. "Don't you see? The very people we've feared since we arrived aren't just the Boys. Its Furiosa, she's no different."

"You know for a fact she wouldn't hurt us-"

"I know for a fact that she's sided with them ever since we got back. And she kept it a secret that there were women in need of help and she left them here. An entire year of us planning to get out and she never says one word about the women in disguise, working alongside these brutes." The Dag looked to Toast for support but when she didn't speak up, she sighed heavily, her tattooed fingers tearing at her bangs in frustration. "She's been lying to us!"

"What's upset you more? That there are women who weren't breeders, living down here with War Boys or that you didn't get that chance?" Toast asked, blunt and mean as she could muster as The Dag hesitated to answer. "This isn't as clear cut as a girl verses boy issue. We've all been used and we've all come from terrible places and we've all tried our best with what we were given. She liberated us. I won't stand for you shredding her like that with your pacifism." And with those bitter words, Toast left, not even casting a glance at Capable on the way to the garages. Her pants clanked with the tools and metal she kept on her, bootfalls heavy, and Toast wondered if the fact she dressed like a War Boy instead of in a skirt upset The Dag as well.

\------------------------------------------

Most of the Boys were currently upending every garage in search for junk, but three were given the task of starting the tune ups, which was where the Bull Dog's old crew was found.

Hatch and Talcum were elbow deep in the Hauler's sputtering engine, Maksim slid underneath as he drained the oil, when Furiosa marched in, her eyes straight ahead, gait stiff as she passed. Hatch turned his head to watch her disappear into the next corridor, up the stairs leading to the rooms, and then caught sight of Ace on her heels, waving his hand to tell them not to worry, keep working. A livid Furiosa wasn't new and to be honest, Hatch liked her fuming rather than silent, so he went back to crossing wires, twisting their copper ends together in the hopes that their connection would be enough to spark.

"What was that about?" Maksim asked, his voice almost inaudible from beneath the old diesel truck.

"Dunno, but Ace is on it."

"One of the wives must have said something to Furiosa." Talcum offered the explanation, wiping the grease on his pants before grabbing blindly into the tool box for a wrench.

"Supposed to call them the Sisters. Or by their names," Hatch corrected on instinct and Maksim pulled himself out from beneath the cab to breath.

"They don't know an exhaust pipe from a hole in the ground but they're nice. Nothing at all like how Trix was."

There was a small eternity of silence before Talcum asked, "Do you think we'll find her in the wreckage when we go?" There seemed to be no words strong enough to break the small hope there, none of them wanting to jinx anything, so they continued their labor, minds engulfed by their deadline and driven to keep pushing on, ready to turn the key and have the Hauler roar to life.

\-------------------------------------------

It'd been a few hours since the Boss had disappeared up to her rooms, long enough for Maksim's stomach to start growling, and the garage was full of bustling work, Boys curled over the Hauler's body, hands carrying in piping, everybody a cog in their own machine.

Scritch and Mash had helped Coma up into the Driver's seat, his legs sprawled on the dash, a jerry rigged guitar in his lap. His fingers lazily formed half tunes on the strings, every now and then they'd be reminiscent of a song the Boys knew and they'd sing a few bars over the noise of their soldering and welding. Nothing could distract them once they fell into the easy mold of work. It was almost like nothing had changed.

Until Capable appeared in the door way, her red curls pushed back with Nux's old goggles, eyes wide as she watched the Boys move about like angry hornets.

A few of them slowed their work, trying to figure out why she was there, though most didn't even give her a cursory glance. But Capable held her chin up under their scrutiny, trying to remember what Furiosa had told the Sisters one of the nights she had been guarding them in the Vault. 'Shoulders down, neck long. And think 'Murder.''

Capable had never felt the need to murder before, but she guessed that she could fake it because none of the Boys approached her, and many met her eyes before looking hurriedly away. She recognized Hatch's seniority by his black paint, remembering it had been him to call up for Furiosa, asking to be lifted after their Walk of Shame, and she weaved through the bustling work, waving to get his attention.

He wiped his hands on an old oil rag he had tied to his belt loop, his eyes searching for something behind her before he finally looked down at her.

"I wanted to know if maybe you had an idea where Furiosa was." Short and to the point. Direct. That was how Furiosa spoke to them. That was how she got people to listen to her.

Hatch pursed his lips, the lined scars matching up perfectly, and he broke their eye contact, as if he was looking for her in the room. Truth was, he wasn't sure if Furiosa wanted to be disturbed. They always let her come back when she was ready.

"Boss usually doesn't like bein' bothered when she's like that." If he was honest, he never really knew what she wanted, only that Ace would follow the Boss up and they'd come back when everything was settled. It'd been like that for so long; he's not sure what sending this girl up there would do. None of the Sisters seemed to understand the Boss.

Capable's frown dimpled her cheek, a small notch forming between her brows as she grabbed his hand, garnering his attention again. "Please, I need to talk to her, its important."

"I…." He tried to push the words out but he'd never been able to tell the Pups no, and as he looked down at this soft creature, he knew he couldn't turn her away either. "Ok. Follow me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so thankful for each of you who read. I've gotten such great feedback that I couldn't stop typing. :) Oops, this chapter is huge and drama filled.
> 
> I'd love to hear from you guys, see what you think. There's a lot of things about to come to light, so get ready for more twists and issues to creep up in the story as everyone tries to live together. 
> 
> Also, I've gotten some private messages on FanFiction (where this story is also posted) asking if there's going to be any romance between characters. I don't have any preferences, since I'm more about slammin' bammin' tight platonic friendships, but if enough of ya'll really can't live without there being a couple in this story, then tell me, and I'll write one in. Or if there's any sort of request you have for the story then let me have it! I'm here to please! :)


	8. How to Come Undone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Ace finds that what he had with Furiosa before her escape is no longer within his grasp.

Furiosa hadn't been able to choose her room, but it had been hard earned and well deserved, becoming the only place of refuge where she could hide away from the horrors of the Citadel. There had been days when she'd lay on the stone floor to luxuriate in the peace and strength as if she had been carved from the jagged stone. It was small compared to the other Imperator quarters, barely enough foot space for her ten crew members to crowd in, but it was hers. There were rebellious thin vines that wove like snakes through the crevices, a rickety table and two chairs by the corner, a ratted mattress stuffed with hair and the feathers of poultry they had purchased and roasted in Bartertown, and a splintered door that Ace had rigged to lock from the inside so she could sleep easy alone if she pleased.

But there was no peace as Furiosa threw the door open, jerking so it squealed on its hinges, and paced to the back of the room, feeling caged when she turned around and faced her Ace, his broad shoulders blocking the doorway. She swallowed thickly, teeth still bared, cheeks flushed with her distress, and hands balled up as if she was rearing to swing. But Ace stood still, his palms open and facing her, eyes unguarded as he watched, waiting patiently like he always did. Furiosa searched for something in her room to throw, forgetting that she had packed what little possessions she owned in the Rig before her escape, and in a blind fury, she scratched her fingertips against the walls, tearing at the limp vines that dared grow here. She ripped them up, their juicies sticky on her hands, and she felt the sting of tears close her throat.

This sort of display wasn't new to Ace, who had seen her down and out before, spitting angry from a match lost in the Pits, shaken by the aftereffects of a sour raid, and even her cold bitterness after attending to orders from the Immortan directly, but something in him refused to think this was the same. He was right too, because when she had exhausted ripping at the poor plants, Furiosa whipped around and leapt at him without a second glance. She always fought like she was desperate, fought like she was clawing the life from her opponent, and though Ace had sparred with her on several occasions, he usually had enough warning to read her fast, innovative movements and strategy his way out of harm's way.

Not today though, as she snapped her hand around his neck and jabbed her thumb into his windpipe. He twisted his neck, trying to dislodge her, but when her grip faltered, she instead struck him hard in the ribs with her stump, his chest hollow as he tried to suck in a pained breath. She rabidly grabbed him round the throat, pulled him in a head lock until his tender lumps where caught in the tight crook of her elbow. Ace frantically grappled to take out her knees but each of his hits only enraged her more, until she yelled and slung him onto the ground, looming over him, her shadow covering his body, eyes wild as if she didn't recognize anything anymore.

On his back, Ace drew ragged breaths, cussing his leaking eyes, and braced for her next attack. Furiosa bent to grab him by the throat again, and when he felt her weight unbalance, Ace caught her by her chest bindings and fisting enough of the thin material to drag her down. He fought to grapple his arms around her flailing limbs. She grit her teeth and bucked hard, stomach tight as she pushed all the voice in her out in a long rough cry, raucous and feral. She swung blindly, hooking his nose with a crunch.

Ace felt the fight swell in him then, his own anger channeling up until it was a red swatch blinding his usual calm. He reared up and sank his teeth into the meat of her shoulder. She rolled into the sting of his mouth, forcing the bone against his teeth until he felt her blood slick his lips and she tore away. Furiosa back handed him, got her knee up enough to squeeze his floating ribs, and his pained shout echoed in the small space.

It was as he laid there, feeling much older than possible, head lolled on the sand of the unswept floor, with his Boss heaving over him, that she comes back to herself, the light returning to her eyes as if someone had lit a candle wick behind them.

"Ace," she whispers, face still unreadable as she reaches her good hand to his lips and touches the beads of her blood there. He's struggling to swallow air, body radiating pain like he's been skinned raw and rubbed in salt, but he can't find it in him to move. There's a moment that passes between them, and once he gathers the strength, he raises his eyes to her and swallows against the dryness in his throat. Furiosa looks wrecked; her shoulder red and white with his teeth marks, her muslin bodice unraveling to show the white, clean skin beneath. She's powerful above him, her rage more capable than most at turning her into an unstoppable machine, and the dim lamp light casts shadows which throw her in and out of clarity. She's been here before, above him, so angry she could kill with it, but it's never been at him, and this feels like it is.

"Furiosa." Her birth name startles something out of her, a small recognition passing over her face as she gentles and curves her body over his, careful of how she settles her weight, forehead pressed to his. Maybe this had been a long time coming, maybe it would have happened no matter how they had already apologized, but there was something to it that scared him. Their usual bouts had been about her letting off steam, but this? This had felt like a massacre. The silence rang around them and Ace took his fevered mind off of the obvious issues at hand by touching his tongue against each of his teeth, checking if she had loosened any. His gums were sore and he tasted blood in the back of his throat from the broken nose but he wasn't going to die. Not yet anyway.

"She's right," Furiosa confessed then, her voice heavy through her clenched jaw. "I'm just as kamicrazy as the War Boys."

Ace drew his hand up slowly, catching on her elbow before it passed up her back, feeling her slow breathing. Then he curled his palm over the fuzz of her hair, soothing her like he had the first night she spent outside the Vault. "Of course you are. Had to be." He felt her nose press into the sore bruise beneath his jaw, fingers curling into fists against his chest. "Ain't nothin' shiny about what we gotta be to make it out here."

His honesty didn't surprise her in the least, and yet Ace wondered if maybe she wanted to hear that she was good. Was pure like the sisters, with their ideals and book smarts.

"You aren't as bad as she said you was," he stated and when she raised her face to his, eyes red rimmed but dry, he quirked a tiny smile.

"I almost beat you to death," she reminded him gravely, and when he licked at his chapped lips, Ace felt the flakes of her dried blood as proof.

"You also killed Champ when you found out he was abusing the Pups. And I once saw you gun down a Road Warrior with his own weapon. I've also thrown two Imperators beneath the wheels of a Rig and choked a Scavenger with the chains that tethered the fuel pod to the tanker." She narrows her eyes at him as he recounts each memory and lets him continue. "Point is, we've all done some bad things. Can't go back on it now. But you've done good too, a whole lot of it. Girls like Trix and Lona, they were better for the things you taught them. Don't doubt that. Don't think for a second you're a part of the reason this place is a shit hole. Was like that before you got here. But you're gonna change that, and it's that," he flexes his fingers in her hair to get her attention, "which makes you better."

She took in a deep breath through her nose, her expanded chest pressing against his sore ribs until he grunted in pain, and she exhaled against his throat. Ace thought idly that she might apologize now but instead, her rough lips press against the jut of his cheek and he felt her murmur, 'thank you' into his skin.

\---------------------------------------------------

The racket of the garage had accumulated while Furiosa slept, the clanking and singing and arguing faint from behind the unlocked door. Ace knew he needed to go down and check in with the Boys, to make sure they were making progress, but once Furiosa had finally calmed enough to rest on the mattress he selfishly let himself bask in the warm reality of her. He kept a keen eye on the door, curled on his side as he drew a hand through her shaved hair, and smoothed the creases of her face. She was safe here, in his arms, sleeping off the foul mood that had overcome her.

It was right as he was drifting off that the door slowly creaked open, a soft voice that he remembers belongs to the red headed sister asking for Furiosa as she enters. Ace is alert then, a finger on his pursed lips and Capable covers her mouth against her surprise. He feels her eyes catalogue their close proximity, the wound on Furiosa's shoulder, and the pile of her belts and bindings on the floor by their cot.

Ace uncurled himself from Furiosa and she slept through it, tugging the thin blanket closer as she pressed her nose into the fabric. It had been a gift from her first Crew, and while it was usually tucked away and safe beneath the mattress, Ace had thought she'd appreciate its soft coolness.

"Sorry she stormed out like that," he murmurs, easing onto one of the wooden chairs, gesturing to the other for Capable to sit. She moved her eyes from the pile of clothes to the bruises on Ace's body, stark and fresh against his unpainted skin.

"She's different with you," Capable finally said as she sat down, ram rod straight so as not to lean against the frail backing.

Several different words wet his lips as if to explain, but it was with a shrug that he opened his mouth and decided to go with, "Was there when she was exiled from the Vault."

"You taught her how to blend in with the War Boys."

"I taught her self-defense. The rest was her," he admitted and when Capable kept glancing around the room, unsure and uncomfortable as if she was a Pup being scolded, Ace crossed his arms over his sore chest and continued. "With the War Boys," he paused and licked his lips, still tasting copper, hesitant to explain something that had never needed words before. "It's not about gender. I mean…plenty of 'em gave the girl children hell when they first come in, but that's just how War Boys haze the Pups. Most don't even understand that there's something different between boys and girls."

Capable watched him as if to catch a lie, her eyes dropping to her hands folded in her lap when she found none. Her tone was soft as she said, "I talked to Briar, the War Girl that Dag tended to. She said that she'd been the one to decide to cut out her breasts; that they got in the way when she was working."

Ace nodded, remembering how Morsov and Malik had accompanied Briar to the Organic Mechanic for the procedure, one of them squeezing her hand while the other told her not to be such a whiny smeg about it. "A lot of girls didn't eat enough for them to grow, so they would just bind them up. Didn't really think much about it. One girl, Tesla..." he feels a warm reminiscence unfurrow at the memory, "she'd grown up in a litter of boys and had no idea she was different until suddenly she came crying about getting the sickness, her half-life coming in the form of her lumps. Told her not to worry and Furiosa taught her what to do. She became a lead Lancer, the Boys none the wiser."

"So Furiosa and the other girls were safe here?"

Ace tried to swallow the disbelief before it showed on his face, shaking his head as he leaned forward, an elbow propped on the table. "Nobody is safe down here. I'm just saying that this division on gender you sisters are obsessed over is make-believe. Worth was measured on usefulness. Everyone scrapped to stay on top. War Boys are capable of many atrocities, too much to contain sometimes, to understand, but it was against everyone. It was weakness that made people vulnerable, not the bits you were given at birth." He meets the girl's stare and wonders if he's making any sense. She's yet to change the blank expression of her face but she hasn't left so maybe its progress. "I've seen many a War Boy force others to do things they don't want. Seen War Girls do the same. It's a power thing."

Ace suddenly feels like he's said too much and snaps his mouth shut, turning his head to check on Furiosa. But across the table, Capable lets her shoulders fall, her hand reaching across the space to grab his. She's cold and smooth without paint, her fingers uncalloused, unfamiliar.

"It's difficult for all of us. This is an entirely different world than we first thought." Capable is keeping her voice low, her eyes boring into the Ace's. "Nux tried to explain it to me but I couldn't see past the violence and death." Her stomach is an oily coil that slicks inside her when she swallows her words, tries to think of what to say. She knows it's none of her business, has no place being asked here, but the question just slips out before she can catch it. "Do you love her?"

"That's enough."

Ace turns to see Furiosa pulling herself up, alert but pained as she moves. Her voice is hoarse from all her yelling before.

"I'm sorry," Capable stands, hands in front of her as if in defense, "I came to make sure you were ok-"

"Leave." Her tone is like sharpened metal, and when Ace rises to join Furiosa, she knifes him with a heated glare that socks him in the gut. "I said leave."

Never had she thrown him out of her quarters, not even when he pushed at her for answers or questioned her motives, and never had Ace found himself stalled like an overheated engine, stuck here as if by quicksand. He nods to her though, always the good soldier, and escorts himself and Capable out, shutting the door behind them as he comes to terms with her refusal. He shouldn't be surprised when he hears the grind of the lock once they were on the other side, but it still makes his chest ache, and he blames it on his cracked ribs.


	9. Let Me Tell You a Story

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Sisters learn about the War Boys and even more about the past that Furiosa and The Ace shared.

"Still need a wheel," Hatch mentions as there's a lull in the working, a group of Revheads circled around the open hood, hands on hips, mouths quirked as they just stare at the engine as if their combined attention will make the Hauler moan to life. Coma is still picking at the guitar strings, and doesn't mind when Talcum brushes his hand over his bald head to tell him he's there, and then leans over him to grab for the tool box.

Talcum finally takes the bait and asks, "Who's gonna be driving?" with a look over his shoulder at Hatch before he slips down from the wheel well, disappearing back under the rig.

"Furiosa, of course, who else?"

Talcum shrugs even though he knows Hatch can't see him. From what he's seen of the Boss, she doesn't need to be driving, what with her chrome arm missing and the way she's still healing. "Dunno. But she doesn't have a wheel." There's more silence, accompanied by the odd off tune twang of the guitar, but Hatch is swathed in his own thoughts. Wheels were hallowed, and usually gifted, if not made outright. You couldn't just take a wheel down from the Alter, that would be blasphemy, yet Immortan Joe was dead, thrown to the Wretched and shredded like waste. He'd lied about being Immortan, Immortal, did that mean that V8 wasn't overseeing Valhalla, opening his gates for those who were Witnessed? What of the Alter then? And the-

Hatch smeared the sweat from his face with the bandana wound around his neck and decided to ignore the heavy feeling in his belly, shaking his head to slosh his thoughts about. Furiosa was the one who killed the Immortan, she'd know the answers. He'd just have to ask her when she came back down.

The engine gave a slow rumble as Scritch pressed the pedal with his hand, the Boys cussing as the machine refused to breath.

"I think Sam had an unfinished wheel for the Firebird. Maybe we can fix it up, make it shine to give her," Talcum tries to mollify, his fingers untightening the fastenings so he can get at the oil filter. Whoever had their filthy paws on this last was a bleeding ass, it was a shit job.

"Hey Coma, hit the gas again!" Maksim yells, a grin on his face, and Mash slugs him in the shoulder for the joke. "Hey, I thought that maybe the crash done knocked his hearing back in," he tried to placate but Maksim just hits him again as Scritch eases the pedal down, making Talcum sputter and swear.

"Wait, wait! I'm changing oil here!"

"Always on your back-"

"Bite me."

A hand seizes Talcum behind his bent knee and slides him out. "That a challenge?" Dodge tests, smiling down playfully, round goggles shading his eyes. Talcum had kicked him square in the chest twice before Dodge caught his feet and the others leapt into the pile to roughhouse.

Hatch groaned as he watched the young ones grapple and bite, remembering when he'd done the same in his youth, but now he just wanted the Hauler to run, and for Furiosa to come back down with The Ace so they could go retrieve the Unwitnessed Boys.

Coma sensed the commotion, strumming quicker in the succession of the brawl, which escalated hastily as Talcum decided he wanted to stop and no one else did. He sunk his teeth into Scritch's ankle as Mash choked him with his own bandana, the line between playing and mauling wearing thinner as they continued. Hatch was just about to step in when The Ace ambled into the garage, rigid and limping, but instead of Furiosa at his heels, it was the sister who wore Nux's goggles.

"Knock it off!" Ace bellowed, his rough tone instantly calling off the scuffle. Everyone jumped to attention, except Talcum who was struggling to pull himself up, wheezing as he straightened his eye patch. The bout was nothing they weren't used to, mild when compared to others they'd had, but Ace wasn't in the mood for the comradery. "What'd you say if you were in the desert and the Boys fixin' your ride were lollygagging about? Huh?" Maksim rolled his eyes and Talcum spit blood into the sand as he finally stood, but overall the bunch looked guilty. "That's what I thought." He made no other comment as he strode out, the silent sister holding her chin up as she passed them in a hurry.

They were quiet in waiting, listening to the clink of The Ace's steel toed boots grow softer in his retreat, and once they were sure he cleared listening range, Hatch blew out the breath he was holding.

"You heard him. Let's gear up."

"Where's Furiosa?" Maksim wondered aloud as the others turned back to their tasks and Hatch was afraid to know the answer. Instead, he shrugged, and ignored how the Boy looked up the stone steps as if he might go ask himself, setting his hands back to work on refitting the windshield.

\------------------------------------------------

As a child, Toast remembers sitting around a smoldering fire, the honeyed glow warming her cheeks as she squirms in her father's lap, watching their Chief illustrate his stories by dipping his thick fingers into the bowls of paints and swiping them across the walls. Their cave was awash in colors, the written amalgamation of how the world came to be, bright hues marking their battles in between, drawing the beginning and the end.

It was after she grew enough to show her proficiency at numbers, the easy way she could handle an array of weapons, and for the Chief to decorate one of her own stories of caliber up on the wall, when she'd traveled to Bartertown with the others. It was there that they found she'd fetch a price fair enough to save the rest of her clan from starvation, and she'd been dragged, chained and gagged, to the Citadel. She only had a glimpse of the rock fortress before the Prime Imperator had given her to Miss Giddy, the elderly woman ushering her inside the Vault with two other girls, a blonde with tattoos inking her fingers and a redhead who was lazily perusing the pages of a manual. Here, the slate walls were large, wide, and empty, while the citizens themselves were painted, the History Men and Women decorated with lines of the old writings, the Breeders with their brands, the Boys tattooed and scarred.

She and the sisters had been encouraged to prick the veins of their gifted novels and between the pages she learned about story telling. Toast and the Motor Rats had preserved their history on the walls, the Wives relearned their history from the books, and apparently the War Boys kept their history inside themselves.

"V8 was fuckin' grinning, you can tell, 'cause the car flipped and the engine spilled out like we gutted it," Briar was in the middle of recounting a war story; something that came naturally it seemed as the other Boys and Pups all crowded around and nodded along. The youths were entranced by the images, eyes wide and innocent as they waited to hear the end, while the older ones helped fill in little details, like they'd been there, and a few bowed their heads and linked their fingers when some of the names were mentioned.

"And then Torq slams his brakes and his new Lancer goes flyin!" She whistles as she pulls her hand through the air as if miming the fall. "Poor Trench freezes up like how most backseat drivers do, all mouth and no movement, until he hits the sand and just lays there like he's dead." There's a ripple of laughter amongst them, and Toast thinks maybe this War Boy will survive until the end of the story. "But the Buzzard's car's aflame now, spitting guzzaline and smokin up, so Torq fangs it and The Prime Imperator tells us to load up and out. Blaze o' glory was what it was, like the sun itself." Her jovial tone soothes into some profound emotion that chokes Toast as the Boys bow their heads and salute, the Pups feeling the reverence of their older brothers and mimicking the sign.

"Lucky bastard is up in Valhalla Mcfeasting, still owes me a socket wrench on a bet he lost in the Pits." Briar squeezes out a laugh even though it punched the wind from her and the Boys howl along too, slapping each other on the back and speaking up so the silence doesn't crowd them out.

They'd been doing this since Toast snuck in, her curiosity about the wounded War Girl greater than anything she's ever felt, right next to her hope of the Green Place. It was as she walked through the arch way that she heard them throwing around short stories, saying "Remember when" as the beginning instead of "Once upon a time" and calling for witness when they recounted the death of a brother. Cheedo and Althia were sitting among the Pups on the floor, the War Boys who were too sick or injured to be in the garage laid up on the stone benches. Toast had let herself be drawn into the pack, unnoticed, though welcome.

It wasn't anything like the cave drawings of her people, with more room for error, and the fear that the stories could easily die with any of them, but it seemed more real, more…alive to Toast.

"Oh now here's a Boy with some stories!" Briar spoke over the din, her bandaged arm outstretched to The Ace as he shambled in from the shadows of the hallway, and to Toast's surprise, with Capable right behind him. He seemed to know what he was walking into because he's already waving the opportunity away, much to the boys chagrin as they beg and plead and start to throw out the short beginnings of stories as if to entice him.

Cheedo waved to Capable, scooting over a bit to make room for her between them, but kept an eye on the door, no doubt hoping The Dag will come marching through.

"What's all this?"

"The War Boys call it Witnessing. It's how they remember their dead," Cheedo whispers and Toast doesn't miss the pained twitch of her lips as Capable looks forward, knowing they both have the burden of a War Boy's Witness weighing their shoulders.

The Ace is still declining his wealth of knowledge, making even the eldest of the boys whine about it, until he rests on an empty ledge, Pups crowding around to get in his lap.

"Story time," one says, his smile mostly gums, and it's as Ace leans back on one hand that he sighs deeply, deflating, and relents.

"Ok, just one," he promises and the room erupts with Boys pressing closer, leaning further in like The Ace is magnetic. "Happened a few thousand days ago," the Pups mouths fall open as if he'd said the beginning of time, "when a War Boy was shut out of Valhalla." The little ones gasp and the older ones snicker, but Toast is captured by the somber look on the Ace's face as he starts the story with "It was a hot day when the Boss and I rode out for the first time..."

Cheedo feels Capable lean her head onto her shoulder, her curls bristly against her face as she leans back. Toast is motionless beside them, stone faced as she listens to The Ace describe the War Rig in her glory days, freshly painted and so new that Immortan Joe himself had christened the vehicle that morning.

"We was on our way to the Bullet Farm, something easy, when the Buzzards came up out of their hiding, as if from underneath the Earth."

Toasts knows from experience that they hide in the submersed city, rising only to the surface to feed.

"I've ridden with a lot of Imperators, but none had the sense that Furiosa had. So when she says to fang it, we gave it the best we had. The kind of battle that only comes along once or twice in a well spent life time. Temp had swung out behind and smoked their lead driver," The boys saluted again, and Toast felt her fingers twitch, yearning to do the same. "And I saw Boss do something that no other Imperator did. She looked back. Looked right back as the car veered and flipped over the dune and she witnessed him. Quiet, just like how she always does it, but she witnessed it. And then their Juggernaut came blazing up, noisy and roaring, Driver's side, and she tells me to get back there and help the Boys."

"I remember that!" Briar says as she sits forward, carefully balancing her elbow on her knee. "Damn near ate a stray bullet, nicked you right on side of your goggles."

"Yep, busted the strap," he remembers.

The Polecat with his broken leg propped on his brother's lap joins in with a hearty, "Is this the one where Ace goes Kamicrazy on the guy who scaled the tanker and went after Furiosa?"

"Yep, heard he beat his head in with a crow bar,"

"No, it was a rocket launcher,"

"Wait a second," Ace interrupted, his mood seeming to lighten as the War Pups and Boys began telling the tales they had heard echoing through the halls when gossip ran low. But he couldn't get a word in as others began to reimagine the scene.

"He ran the man through the belly with his knife, until all his innards were outards."

"Na uh, he plucked the Buzzard's eyes out with his thumb!"

The sisters shared a look between themselves as the rumors kept coming to light, and even if this story wasn't where he'd done those things, how many of them were true?

"Hey!" He shouted over the unruly storytelling, everyone slowing their words until it was quiet. "I don't remember but two of you being there, so let me tell it. Or I could stop now since you already know…" he trailed off and everyone vehemently declined that offer, shushing each other so he could continue.

"Anyway, the bastard tried taking a hit at the Boss, climbing up on the tanker with his spiked boots, and I leapt at him. Wrestled him on the roof right before he had the chance to grab her, and I had my hands around his neck when he snatched my crow bar and got a good swing in," The Boys erupted into wild laughter, some of them hooting and oohing as he nodded, embarrassed that someone had gotten the best of him. "Busted my jaw." He gestures to the skew of his chin, and Toast suddenly notices that his mouth was always just a bit to the left, an old wound that he had mastered enough not to show obvious weakness.

"Coulda ripped your head from your shoulders," Briar mentions and Ace shrugs.

"Valhalla won't take him," another says, and at this, Ace grows quiet underneath the looks of the sisters, noticing them grouped together and listening intently.

"What'd you do next?" A little Pup prompts, the innocence in his question like a ringing bell amongst the War Boys din.

It's Briar who answers, "Snapped the smeg's neck, I saw that happen." She twists her hands and voices a squelching noise that makes the little ones shudder in disgust.

Ace reigns in the noise again, more subdued now beneath the sisters attention, and retells the rest of the story as if he's trying to end it quickly.

"They were crawling like ants trying to decouple the tanker-"

"I fell beneath the wheels but Chute caught me by my foot from his perch on the back-"

"The car flipped but Malik stopped his bike to give me a lift-"

The longer the story went on, the more Toast wondered just how the hell Ace survived any of his runs if this was anything to go on. No wonder the other Boys called him a Cast Out. Valhalla wouldn't take him, Ace couldn't be killed.

"I tried to get back up to the cab in time."

There's a sudden weight in his voice that presses down on Cheedo's chest and the shadow in his grey eyes frightens her. She almost wants to tell him to stop, she doesn't want to know, but the Boys around them have fallen into the story, seized in the moment of flames, and fights, and glory.

"Their lead had finally caught up and the gunner turns the harpoon toward her and fires, the Juggeraught locking its breaks. Ripped the wheel right out of her hands, caught the door, and tipped the entire cab."

War Pups gasp, covering their faces with their hands. War Boys are grinning wildly, though some have enough decorum, or rationality, to look affronted.

"Rolled the whole Rig, cargo and all. A bunch of the boys had jumped onto nearby pursuit vehicles but some of us took the hit. They were able to race out with the Juggernaut, leading them away from us. I remember not feelin a thing, too scared to open my eyes to inspect the damage. And I saw a light, like a welder's flame, followed by a voice that called to me."

Excited Pup's interrupted.

"Was it a Valkyrie? Come to take you through the Gates?"

"The shine the chrome streets of Valhalla?"

Ace shook his head, twisting his lips as he said, very plainly, "No. It was Boss, cussing everything under the sun. The noise punched me right in the lungs and dragged my hide from the sands. At first I couldn't see her, the cabin was twisted all wrong but then….there she was." He wipes at his mouth and massages the lumps at his neck.

Capable was watching The Ace as closely as the other Boys, his pause making her stomach swoop with panic.

"She was pinned by the warped frame, sunk into the sand and screaming like a banshee. Wasn't pain I don't think, not that shrill sort of sound, but just anger, like she was frustrated she couldn't lift the damn thing off her. I staggered up and she pulled her gun, afraid I was one of the Buzzards, and that's when I saw it." Ace raises his arm, unsettling one of the Pups leaned against him. "Had ripped her left arm, right here," he makes a line almost as high as his elbow, "very clean, just a lot of blood soaked into the sand, and Furiosa looking at it like she might rip off mine too if I touched her."

Capable feels Toast take her hand, fingers pressing hers into the grit of the floor, and she understands. They had no idea the life Furiosa had led before Joe assigned her to protect them, but more importantly, as the Ace finished the story with them coming back to the Citadel, failures, Furiosa refusing treatment from the Organic Mechanic and the Ace being ridiculed for not doing his duty correctly, the sisters peek behind the mirage Joe had smoke and mirrored around them.

There isn't barely a pause before the room is a chorus of other stories and the Ace lifts Pups from his lap so he can meander toward Althia, who had begun checking in on some of the Boys who slept through the stories. Capable watches as he gestures to his face, and Althia nods, smiling as she takes his unbalanced face in her hands, thumbs on either side of his sharp nose, and sets it right with a swift crack.

"He gave up his chance of eternal glory for her," Cheedo's quiet tone doesn't match the confusion marring her face.

Toast scrunches her brows up, cutting her eyes at her sister. "Oh come on, their made up heaven isn't real."

"But he believed it."

"He was doing a duty-"

A gaggle of War Pups traipsed through, spotted with oil and giddy with the scent of guzzoline. The tallest was the only one with his eyes blackened, and after searching around, he spied the Ace and ran right up to him. Ace knelt to his level and nodded along with the conversation, resting his hands on the Boys shoulders as he stood and gave them orders as they scattered.

"What is it?" Briar asked as the Ace passed her, ignoring Althia's instructions to 'sit still, we still have to bind your ribs!' as he rushed out.

The others braced themselves up, trying to see what was going on until Althia began pressing them back down and shushing them as they began to get rowdy.

Capable whistled and tried to remember the name Furiosa had called. "Shock!"

The Pup from before stopped in the bustle to leave, approaching gingerly as if the Sisters might eat him.

"Shock, what's going on?" She asked in a no nonsense tone and the little Pup tucked his chin into his chest, rifling his hands in his pockets as if that's where the answer was. "Furiosa put me in charge while she's resting."

That seemed to push past any concerns as he promptly offered, "The Hauler is running. The Ace needs to pick out a crew," before he bolted, disappearing in the mess of others as they flooded out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't be happier with how much you guys support this fic! I continue because ya'll make it possible! A big grateful thank you to everyone who's followed, reviewed, and given kudos. With each conversation and question, I find out more about where I want this to go and what ya'll want to see. :) 
> 
> Please feel free to comment what's good and bad, I'm trying to make sure that the characters, situations, conversations, and drama are still compliant with the fandom but are relatable with the headcannons I've seen embraced by the fandom and made by myself. I hope everyone is enjoying and if not, raise your hand and I'll fix it! Or add what you'd like.
> 
> Stay shiny and chrome my friends.


	10. Plant Only the Seeds You Want to Find Shade In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Furiosa and The Ace are still figuring out how to fix whatever as broken between them while The Dag soul searches as she converses with the Life Givers, learning bits about Furiosa and what it meant to be a Wife and later a Mother.

Furiosa can count on one hand how many times she's fought one of her crew outright, discrepancies and mutinies that she put down as quick as if blowing out a flame, but never had it been Ace. He might not have been sneaking behind her back trying to start trouble but something in his anger and the shadow that passed over his grey eyes at Capable's question was enough for her to feel betrayed. She cast a glance over the ripped weeds and her bindings, the empty hook from where her chrome arm once hung, and finally to the sting of her open shoulder. Ace had dabbed at her with his shop rag, wetting an end with his spit before he cleaned at the flakes of her blood, but the wound was still flushed and fresh. She'd had worse, but there was something about this one that hurt more than all the other mangled scars hewn on her skin.

She felt the weight of exhaustion behind her forehead, and like many days, wanted to sleep until she sated the weakened beast in her, wanted to close her eyes and let the problems become someone else's.

'Sometimes you gotta just lie down.' Ace had once confided as she tried to escape the Chop Shop, the mangled bits of her arm bandaged, face pale with bloodloss. Furiosa bitterly wanted to tell him just what sort of things laying down got a woman. Instead, she set to unhooking herself from the mute Bloodbag with barely a wince and led Ace back to her Imperator's Quarters to rest.

Furiosa flexed her fingers against the cold silk of her blanket and tucked away the feeling that rose in her throat, forcing herself to stand.

\----------------------------------------------------

"I don't bleedin believe it."

"Gave Malik quiet the fright when it finally thundered to life, he'd still had his head under the hood." Hatch smiled over Ace's hunched shoulder, eyes flitting back and forth over the belts and screws and welded parts. The lines looked clean, the motor sounded shine, and the underbelly wasn't leaking anything at all. The Hauler couldn't be more perfect.

But Ace wasn't convinced in the slightest. "You told me a week, Talcum," he groused as he unscrewed the ribbed cap and eyed the water level.

"The transmission wasn't as hard a fix as we thought. And we found the parts needed for the break system and twin exhaust, split the pipes below so there's two towers-"

"I know how it works; I want to know how ya'll took a seven day job and gave me barely one." Ace looked around the garage, its mounted torches throwing odd shadows over the Blackthumbs as they shrugged and regarded each other noiselessly. At their guilty expressions, Ace set his hands on his hips, eyes on the ground in thought. "I know ya'll want to be out there, picking up the rest of the litter. But I don't want this rushed, especially if the Hauler is the last hope those Boys and their rides have." The garage felt tiny with all the War Boys and Pups crowding around the machine, eyes on Ace like he was the Boss. "You hear me?"

"The Hauler will run," Malik spoke up, shifting his weight as he tried to catch anyone's eye, get them to back his decision. No one said another word and Ace wondered what Furiosa would say in this case. That as the answer they wanted to hear.

Ace should be able to trust them on it. Each Revhead and Blackthumb understood what it took for a vehicle to run, knew the danger if it wasn't primed correctly. The implicit consequences if even the slightest mod was unfit rested on each of their heads.

"Ok. We'll head out in the morning, after you get a good rest. And until I pick a crew," He raised his hand against their sudden fit of quarrels and the whining stopped. "I can't take the lot of ya, you know that. And until I gather the crew I want the job double checked. Not a bolt out of place."

A choir of 'yes sirs' followed him as he nodded for the group to disassemble, either for work or sleep, and turned to look up the stair way, weighing his chances of being welcome.

\---------------------------------------------------

The hallway of the Life Givers was one of the top most levels, protected by a door smaller than, but just as inescapable as, the one guarding the Vault. But since the end of Joe's reign, the women left it wide open, enjoying the simple choice of coming and going as they pleased, dividing their time between the misted rooms of the Greenhouses and the sun lit patches of the top levels where they were ferrying books and things down from the Vault.

Furiosa had told them they had no reason to fear the War Boys but had shown them simple ways to fend for themselves, bolstering their idea of independence, the strength in self. So far they hadn't seen a single Boy, only Pups who wandered in and out with news and requests, sometimes just passing through to get a hug or kiss from the Life Givers, and they couldn't be more pleased. Their bodies were theirs, their children where theirs, and these rooms were no longer cages in which to keep them.

The Dag had met many of the Life Givers, past wives of Joe, each with different stories, different children in their arms or toddling around their feet, but each still had the brand burnt into the skin of their spine. As she watches them move to water the leaves, singing back and forth little melodies she'd sometimes heard Miss Giddy hum, there's a voice in her which reminds that she would have ended up like this, had Joe continued to reign. Plump with good food, breasts always heavy with Mother's Milk, her body, her babies, everything seized from her until she died in childbirth. That's always how they went.

Her hands traced the subtle outline of her belly, the child quiet now, and she wonders if it will kill her. Force its way out like how Joe had forced his way in, as if to tear her in half, leave her bleeding to death with the primal act.

"Need help there?" Eva asks as she sets a pail of shelled beans at her feet. The Dag had been pinching holes in a row of soil, imported from Bartertown no doubt, and covering the hard seeds that had been collected and preserved by Keeper.

"No, just thinking," she says as she presses her fingers into the soft dirt, burying the seed, lingering on the grit and moisture.

"It's fertile ground. Should spring little sprouts as long as we tend them," Eva says encouragingly as she inspects the rows of mounds, a smile brightening her round cheeks. The Dag grits her teeth against spitting at that word. Fertile. That's what the Organic Mechanic had called her while kneeled between her legs, fingers feeling around as Capable presses her forehead to hers, thick, red curls like the vines in a jungle, hiding her. At the memory, her fingers dig into the soil as if to claw the seed out, and Eva's hand curled over hers. "How about you help me shuck the peas." She offers kindly.

There was something in her tone that The Dag couldn't possibly disobey, and whether it was her trusting eyes or the soothing warmth of her hand, Eva was a force of nature. She was struck wondering if Eva had been a wife when Furiosa was in the Vault.

A Greenthumb who was missing three fingers on his left hand and had tumors mottling his legs shushed the Pup tied in a sling around his chest by kissing the child's bald head and murmuring something lowly to him. He wasn't painted, wore only the slave brand and another symbol that tied him to the Green House until death, and when the Dag passed him, she didn't feel the revulsion that the War Boys dug out of her.

Eva led her under the revolving tendrils of the hydroponic gardens and waved to the ladies who were sitting around peeling potatoes in the dying light of day. Dag sat beside Eva and another woman whose hair was twisted into tight rows against her scalp, and settled into the job, picking at the fleshy sleeves until the little pea pearls were free. Those she dropped into the empty bucket between Eva and herself, the mindless task easy to do while she chewed on her thoughts.

There was gossip between the Mothers, small little things passed back and forth of no real importance, and the bucket was half full when she asked, "Did you know Furiosa as a Wife?"

The other ladies didn't pay her any attention, their hands idly sliding their blades to shave the skins of the potatoes, mouths still moving in a background sort of buzz, but Eva slowed and met her eyes.

"Yes."

"Was she always like how she is now?"

"Like what? Rough? Driven? Dangerous?" Eva picked up another handful of beans, as if The Dag's question wasn't as appalling as she had first expected, and gave an odd sort of sound in contemplation. "All women have those. Some in different forms. Some don't even know it. Some have been pushed to it, others driven away." She keeps her eyes on her work but Dag stills, watches. "Furiosa wasn't like most of the wives, who were willowy and bright and soft. She came to us bristly and angered and never did anything when told, always had a smart remark for Joe. I think he kept her because of it. Because things like her were hard to break." As soon as the words were out in the air, Dag felt something sour inside of stomach, and she noticed the other women had turned their attention to Eva.

"Women like Furiosa aren't rare. She's just as much a woman as we are." One of the other Mothers says, the toddler in her lap chewing on potato skins. "But there's a choice that everyone has to make. Either that we can't change it, and there is nothing better, and we will have to make the best of our circumstances or…" she trails off and the Dag remembers the frantic anger in Furiosa as she fought Max, and the unrelenting perseverance to keep moving forward, her despair at losing her home, the race back to the Citadel, unmasking Joe.

"How'd she get to be a War Girl?"

Eva shrugs, finishing the peas, and settles her hands in her lap. "That story is her's to tell."

The other women nod and go back to their work, quiet and content, while Dag chews on her thumbnail, tasting soil grit and bitterness.


	11. We Are Not Expendable Goods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Toast struggles to find her place in the new regime.

Toast sought sanctuary in the garages where they kept the bikes, and though the prototypes aren’t like those her tribe of Motor Rats had ridden, the differences were miniscule at best. Taking apart their engines took no thought, hands busy as she crouched, the ache in her back sharpening the longer she meticulously works. Its fruitless labor, but it lets her cycle through the steam building in in her lungs, escaping only when she huffs a sigh or whistles long and low over a rusted frame or torn rubber wheel. 

Oil slicks are pungent patches littered around her, painting the soles of her stolen boots, but they make getting at her a maze. She doesn’t so much mind this room; there’s only one entry way, in front of her at all times, and so far only three of the boys had peeked in at her work, never staying long after her eyes caught them. Toast figured they were all Choppers, low ranking boys who rode a ‘cycle. It wasn’t clear why they were so far down the pecking order; it took a skilled motorist to get the clutch and balance of a bike in the soft sands, but their limited War Paint and the way they cowered at the other boys proved her theory. 

“Hey! That one’s mine, paws off!”

Toast jerked up at the angry admonishment but after one glance, she didn’t reach for the cast iron pipe wrench she had found in an abandoned tool box. The War Boy was thin and short, the kind of body that wouldn’t sink the tires in the dunes, and when he knelt on the other side of the bike, across from her, she was struck with how they were the same size. 

“All I did was flush the fluids; it’d been sitting for too long,” Toast explained as the boy uncapped the fuel tank and peered suspiciously inside. He passed his palm over the dented wheel frame, unsettling dust, before he gave her a soft, perplexed look.

“You know how to do that?” 

Toast didn’t have the time to look affronted before he whistled at her work, eyes wide. “You fixed the gauge too, almost like shine.” There was a small moment of quiet as he assessed her work, mouth pressed in a thin, wan line, and Toast stood. 

“It was nothing. The other sisters and I aren’t worthless, you know. We have skills, just different than yours.” She feels a trill of power snake up her spine, making her stand taller over the kneeling War Boy whose ride she had fixed. But when he met her eyes this time she recognized his expression and her stomach knots tightly.

He didn’t run, not like how she would have. He simply braced his weight on his knees and dropped his shoulders slightly, submission written in the soft lines of his body. “What do ya want in return?” He asks in a whisper, eyes focused on her tattered, borrowed boots.

The tremble in her fingers can’t be quell by making fists and in a conflicting moment she feels like she might retch. How did men do it? How did men look down at this display and take pleasure from it?

“Get up,” she grinds out, uneasy, hoping he’ll hear the fright in her voice and leave, understand she doesn’t want anything from him, never expected that in return for tuning the bike. 

Instead, he stands and begins to unlatch his belts. “Stop it!” Toast orders, horrified as he looks blankly at her again, reflecting her fear in his eyes. 

“You wanna do it yourself?” Is his question, gesturing to his belts and it’s the soft mumble of his voice and the puppy fat of his cheeks and the three ribs she could count on his starved body that breaks her. 

“I don’t want anything from you!” 

And to her surprise, he scowls back at her, brows scrunching his eye paint. “It’s only fair, that’s how the trade works.” 

“No, it’s not! You don’t just…” her hands are shaking as she bunches them in her hair, pulling to get out of the walls pressing around her. “That’s not something you give away or trade. Your body is yours.” 

The war boy looks at her as if she’s lost her mind, as if she’s speaking a different language, and she wonders if maybe she’s reverted to speaking her mother tongue. The garage is shrinking, the air thick and damp as she tries to distance herself from the role she’s been thrust into. 

There’s a singular moment between them, dissonant and terrifying, but it begins to dissipate when he loops the tongue of his belt back through the metal clip, tightening his pants. His eyes are on his slow work, and when finished, the boy turns his head to the wall, a strange color mottling beneath his pale cheeks. 

Toast isn’t sure what to say, words gagging in the back of her throat, and a brief flash of pain passes over her as she lets out a long breath, her jaw tight. 

“I didn’t fix your bike because I wanted something from you,” she keeps her voice low and in the way he bristles, she thinks maybe he’s embarrassed. Her eyes find a rusted hole in the back fender, the flecking, faded paint distracting her, giving an idea. “In return you can show me how to patch this.” Toast squats down and runs her gloved fingers over the bike’s wound. 

There’s hesitation, a small moment where Toast thinks the boy might combust under the weight of the misunderstanding, but then he’s kneeling too, eyes slow as they graze the line of the bike and finally he nods. 

“First we have to sand off all this rust, so we can start new.”

Toast meets his eyes and agrees, pulling over the milk crate of tools. The work is easy, the shop silent, and after a while she finds her eyes tracing the shapes of his body mods. He’s got the same flame tatts as some of the other boys, but his collar bones are traced with the lines of handlebars, no doubt in deference to his Chopper status. She also notices the rub of road rash on his shoulders, healed but mangling down his arm.

“Thank you for…you know,” sis voice is tiny compared to the whir of the sander they used earlier, the only sound that broke the silence sifting between them. 

Toast shrugs, continues to stir the paint with a ruler. “Bikes are my specialty, fixing them is easy.”

The Boy scrunches his eyebrows in confusion as he says, “That’s not what I meant.” 

But before either could broach the subject, there was a metallic clang that rattled trough the corridor, echoed by a raucous mob of shouting. The boy leapt up on instinct and bounded for the door, Toast close on his heels as he sprinted through the maze of hallways. 

“What is it?”

The noise accelerates the closer they draw and once they climbed down the stairs to the main garage, there was no need to ask. 

The crews were huddled around, forming a ring for the fight, but instead of hollering to instigate, most were trying to stop them, their faces concerned and frightful as opposed to the prided blood lust they usually wore. The two sparring in the middle were a blur of movement, sloppy, chaotic, and desperate as they mauled each other. 

“Furiosa!” One of the boys yelled as he grabbed around her waist, trying to hold her back from her opponent, and was unprepared for her stump to swing around and catch him in the nose with a slick crack. 

Sure enough, it was Furiosa who spun to the other war boy who lay prostrate on the ground, spitting blood in her shadow. She lingered over him, shoulders hunched, teeth grit as she panted against the adrenaline begging her to dig hands in his throat and finish him. The boy rolled off his stomach, clutching at his skewed knee, and its then that Toast catches the glint of silver in Furiosa’s hand. 

“Anyone else?” She roars, turning her back to the boy when he tried to stand and crumpled back to the ground. Furiosa wielded the pipe wrench in hand like a scepter as she turned to face the audience, challenging and rabid, gaze skirting the room for movement. 

The boys were still, immobilized at her bared teeth, watching as she stalked back toward her fallen opponent and threw the wrench beside him with a steely clatter. He jerked in fear, unable to raise his head and meet her eyes when she knelt down to him and whispered something to him. 

Toast couldn’t hear what she said but from the vein popping in Furiosa’s neck, the tight coil of her arms, the stone set shoulders and how the boy curled away from her, she knew it was a promised threat. She stands then, beseeching the rest of them with open arms. 

“Don’t you ever, ever think I have grown complacent. I have not stood for dissension and will not start now.” Furiosa’s fist tightens as she sweeps the room, adding a sharp, “Get back to work,” before marching out. The Ace is waiting for her at the door but she passes him without any acknowledgement. 

Toast shoulders through the boys milling about, none of them going near the fallen war boy who was still hissing at his wounds, scrabbling at the stone with raw fingers as he tries to hold his weight. Its Ace who comes for him once the others scattered, reaching a hand out in offering. His help is knocked away and Ace growls, fisting the boy’s bandana and wrenching him up on his ruined knee. 

“Should leave you here,” he mentions, shouldering the boy’s weight with an arm around his back, “for pullin something like that.” 

“Why don’t you?” Is the gurgled answer, more blood spit on the floor as they walk past Toast toward the Chop Shop. 

“Because she showed you mercy. Coulda smashed that thick skull of yours for sneaking behind her and catching her blindsided. I’d have killed you for something like that. But she kept you.” The Ace is all a matter of fact as he drawls the words, speaking slowly like Furiosa has scrabbled the poor boy’s brains. “If I was you, I’d watch your back. She’s not the only one you got be afraid of now.”

And with that spoken between them, Ace gives the boy over to Althia, the woman no doubt called by a scared Pup. Beside her, a Blood Bag accepts the Boy’s weight and carries him back toward the ward. 

“What happened?” 

Ace turns at Toast’s question, something like surprise lining his forehead. 

“Just an ignorant squabble. Happens all the time. Except now, Furiosa won’t have it.” He wipes the blood from his hands on his new pants and then levels Toast with a frim look.

“You been digging around the bikes?” When she scrunches her eyebrows, confused, Ace motions to the grease spots littering dark arms like freckles, smeared all over her white shawl. 

“What of it?”

He shrugs at her defensive tone, mouth a thin line. “Just that maybe you would like to learn a real trade. From what Furiosa says, you’d make a good Polecat.” 

The silence between them is filled with the whir of machines and the chatter of the Black Thumbs but his promise of getting in the ranks overpowers everything else. 

“Think it through.” Ace nods in dismissal and then heads back for the garages, leaving Toast to wonder if this is what betrayal feels like, becoming the things which had hunted them. And yet, as she climbs back up toward the rooms where the Life Givers live, where she and the sisters have cots to share, Toast feels maybe it’d be like donning wolf’s clothing, the fangs and claws giving her security.


End file.
